“Your entire life will change. Everything you believe, every piece of food you eat. Every piece of independence you have. You can't go without thinking of another person.”
Parenthood is not at all what I expected it to be. I thought you make little people in your image. But they are nothing like me or their father.
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Having kids made me clearer about who I was as a woman. I just wanted to exhibit good qualities for my daughter.
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“Seeing my kids for the first time was primal. The ferocity of love you feel for your children when you see them for the first time — but you've known them inside of you — is phenomenal.”
I didn't know how to balance work and motherhood. You just do it, you know?...I was just like every mom out there trying to figure it out.
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We have rules around the house. I always say, if you aren't yelling at your kids, you're not spending enough time with them. I'm just telling everyone to clean up all the time.
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“I feel like I was so confused before I had kids, I almost got in my own way.”
As moms, we have a unique opportunity to keep changing this attitude that ambition is ugly in women.
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If you're not embarrassing your children, you're not spending enough time with them. That's basically my role. It's our job as parents to really ramp up the embarrassment.
“I don't think there's been an hour of my life since Ava was born that I don't think of my kids. I call it my CNN ticker tape.”
There are some sacrifices you make, and it hurts your heart sometimes, but my kids tell me they're proud of what I've accomplished, and that means everything.
No one's really doing it perfectly. I think you love your kids with your whole heart, and you do the best you can.
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“I got married when I was 23 and I had two kids by the time that I was 27. So I don’t know, you know, sometimes it’s good to know yourself.”
The teenagers are much more demanding. You’re constantly having to guide them through all those big first moments in their lives — the first love of their life, getting their first car, and then thinking about college.
They very rarely agree with anything you tell them. And when it comes to a 17-year-old girl, you begin to see that you don’t know anything about her any more.
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