The babies, the boy and girl, are not really babies anymore. They are annoying, drive-me-crazy Thing 1 and Thing 2 pre-teens. They drive me to levels of frustration that only a bleeding heart, loving parent can understand. When it gets rough, and sometimes that seems daily, I yell and scream (which I really hate doing) out of frustration because they haven't listened to me the first 200 times I asked or said it in a normal voice. Nowadays, I just jump to screaming and have to catch myself. I'm a work in progress. As a raving lunatic mother, I am consistently filled with self doubt about my parenting skills. I think maybe I expect too much from them, maybe I do not expect enough. I ask myself how the heck do other parents do this and get through it. I often wonder about running away for a while. I am planning a vacation without them and of course I feel a tinge of guilt about it, but I know it is needed. It is needed because I need to get away from feeling like I am not go