There's this thing about parenting-a phenomenon, really. The never say never phenomenon. If you swear it won't be you...then surely it will.

 For example, you might say: I will never sit on the couch at 11 o'clock at night, wearing leggings and a sports bra and eating leftover freezer food, next to an undecorated Christmas tree, less than 10 days before Christmas, surrounded by clean laundry which has been dumped onto a dirty floor, listening to exhausted, pukey children sleep-talk after a serious bout with the stomach flu, and after showing the 4-year-old many cat videos on you tube on a cracked phone, in order to get him to fall asleep (on my head, literally) on a bed which has been stripped down to the mattress pad so that all germy linens could be washed, and after having found the (outside!) cat on my kitchen counter licking a stick of butter. And I would not imagine writing about such a day on a phone because my 2-year-old dumped a cup of water on my laptop and destroyed it. And I would never do it on my lonesome because my handsome husband is sleeping downstairs in the extra room because he just stopped throwing up and has to sleep so that he can get back to work the next day. 

  Because if you ever said that your life would never even graze the tip of that imperfect iceberg, then you will find yourself in that very spot. Not that I would know :)

  I think, however, that the phenomenon lies in the fact that you are pleased as punch to be doing and experiencing everything you swore not to. It's impossible to imagine how truly, madly, deeply you can love this little family of yours. That love is what you never factored in before...and it makes all the difference.