One of the worst things about having two children is the inevitability of sickness.

Last year, even with just one, I was housebound at least a few days each month due to runny noses, fevers or stomach viruses. This year it is even worse. We have spent more than 10 days unable to leave the house due to two tag team illnesses. And it is only January.

Mama needs to leave the house and workout to stay sane. Trying to squeeze my workout in to the limited daylight hours between Rob leaving for work and returning home is challenging to say the least (although I have managed to run 3 out of four of these past sick days, so not too bad, really).

Despite managing to eek out a couple four-milers, I am feeling low, low, low.

This winter is killing me. Mama needs some good news.

Between the illnesses, constant snow, ice, sleet and recession woes, I am done. Please, if you have any good news, send it my way. Because right now? I have about had it.

I recently saw the movie “Marley and Me.” In it, a writer loves his insane, scraggly, difficult dog for more than a decade in spite of all his faults. To most, the movie is sad. To me? It is devastating.

This is not because it is not schmaltzy. It is. This is also not because it is particularly well-done. It isn’t. It is because I relate so much to the Jennifer Aniston character (named Jenny, oddly enough).

There is a scene where she is screaming at her husband after their incorrigable dog has woken their youngest, possibly colicky baby from a nap prior to wrecking the house. “He needs to get out,” she screams.

I wept.

Because I think I said the same thing a few nights ago. Every morning I wake up and have to clean up pee. I once slipped and fell in it while pregnant with Alan. We can’t use our downstairs because our dog keeps marking it as his and I don’t want our children in an unsanitary environment. Rocky (our dog) stinks, he barks, he has impossible-to-meet needs and always manages to bark at the most inopportune times.

Who am I kidding? He barks All. The. Time.

And yet we keep him. We keep him because we made a commitment. Because another family would have given him away a long time ago. Because we know a dog with needs as vast as Rocky’s would not be long for this world in a shelter.

He was put outside to die when he was just a puppy by an owner who did not know what to do with this high energy Chihuahua/mini pinscher mix. A year later, he was taken in by a Chihuahua rescue league that found him impossible to place due to his penchant for non-stop barking. And then we showed up on his foster family’s doorstep, took one look at the yapping, snarling caramel-colored bag of pure insanity and fell in love.

For the first three years of our marriage, he was our baby.

Curled up with his brother on Christmas:

Learning to swim:

Poor dog. He was not long for that place in our family. From the day our first child was born, he was dethroned, exiled to the land of kenneling and trunk time instead of sleeping in our bed and riding shotgun in the car.

But he is a member of our family just the same. Even when he drives me crazy, he is here to stay. I refuse to have it any other way. After all, he is Sam and Alan’s brother. And he ain’t heavy. Just 16 pounds of pure love.

Sasha Brown-Worsham is a freelance writer whose monthly column runs online at The Family Groove. Her work has appeared in Pregnancy, Runner's World, Self and many other publications. She lives in Boston with her husband, daughter, son (and a cat and dog).

Our country appreciates a nice big family story. Look no further than the Brady Bunch, Eight is Enough, Jon and Kate Plus Eight and the Duggars. We watch them, we laugh, we cry, we send food, diapers and baby food by the cartful.

So what about the octuplets?

The recent story about the California octuplets born to a single mother with six other children has most people feeling chilled. A quick online search will turn up dozens of hateful comments urging the mother to give some up for adoption or questioning the ethics of the doctor who gave her fertility treatment.

I agree with much of what I am reading in terms of the ethical questions. These extreme multiple pregnancies are dangerous and taxing to the mother as well as the babies who often require intensive, long stays in the NICU. Certainly there need to be limits on what is legal and what is required of doctors ethically.

Further, I do take issue with having children you can’t afford. Not everyone who has a baby needs to be wealthy, but they at least ought to be able to provide their child with the basics. Since we don’t know the mother’s financial situation, it seems people are only guessing that she will require public assistance. And therein lies the outrage.

The problem?

Outraged or not, we are still talking about eight little babies. And they have needs. Why are we so outraged by this mother and not by the other families with more than 10 children who take handouts?

The way we feel about how they babies got here is irrelevant in light of the fact that they are here. We need to support them and remember that, at some point, they will be able to read and do Google searches.

Are hateful diatribes lamenting their existence really what they need to see?

I promised myself before I had children that I would never be one of “those mothers.” The kind that lets herself go entirely, stops having sex with her husband and generally becomes a shuffling, sweatpants wearing, minivan driving bore.

But as I listened to the following lyrics to the Arctic Monkeys “Fluorescent Adolescent” this morning at the gym, I could not help but wonder.

“You used to get it in your fishnets
Now you only get it in your night dress
Discarded all the naughty nights for niceness
Landed in a very common crisis
Everything's in order in a black hole
Nothing seems as pretty as the past though
The Bloody Mary's lacking her Tabasco
Remember when you used to be a rascal?

Falling about
You took a left off Last Laugh Lane
You were just sounding it out
You're not coming back again.”

After all, I went from this:

to this:

in a manner of three years. Yikes. Granted, the first outfit was a costume and not what I normally wear. And the second one was just after I woke up on Christmas morning. But I’d be lying if I did not admit that I spend 65 percent of my time looking like I do in the second photo above. The other 35 percent of time is spent in my gym clothes.

Uh-oh.

Maybe it is time to get some of my old mojo back. To that end, Rob and I are hitting the town tomorrow night sans children. I am two pounds from the weight I want to be and most of my old clothes fit. Time to break out ye olde bustier? Maybe so.

There will be no lefts of last laugh lane. Not yet. Maybe the fishnets will even make an appearance—under the jeans, of course. After all, I am a mama now.

There is almost nothing that gets a group of mothers more heated than issues surrounding our children. One feels breast is best, the other hearts formula and there goes the friendship.

Women are always our own worst enemies, but never is this more evident than on Mommy listserves and in the blogosphere.

This week it has been particularly evident as one mother on my listserve took another to task for her thoughts on a current film. Elsewhere I got into a heated discussion with another blogger on taking our kids to playgroup when they are recovering from an illness.

My discussion with the blogger was civilized and respectful. We disagreed, but we were able to talk about our differences and see one another’s points (for the record, I am pretty laid back about illness. I certainly keep my kids fever free for 24 hours before having them around other kids, but beyond that, I think kids get sick. That’s life.) Sadly, the listserve discussion did not remain as respectful.

The hardest task any man or woman ever undertakes is becoming a parent. So why are we so hard on one another? I have wondered this ever since my daughter was born two years ago. This week, I answered my own question.

We are considering sleep training our son more diligently (I know, I know, we “started this” weeks ago, but it never took) using the “cry it out “ method. Highly controversial, it’s mere mention has garnered dozens of unsolicited advice about lifelong “emotional scars” and “trauma.”

I got mad. Really, really mad. Because I am all for keeping my child’s developing sense of self strong, but Mama needs sleep and I am not about to let some voodoo science tell me that what I am doing will harm my child. It is the first time since becoming a mom that I honestly have not wanted to hear the other side.

My reaction tells me that I have to hear the other side. The more sensitive the topic, the more it needs to be explored. I need to be comfortable enough with my own decision not to get angry. It is what I have been touting since Sam’s birth.

So I am open. I am listening. And I hope other moms will do the same.

Sasha Brown-Worsham is a freelance writer whose monthly column runs online at The Family Groove. Her work has appeared in Pregnancy, Runner's World, Self and many other publications. She lives in Boston with her husband, daughter, son (and a cat and dog).

I came from a family of two girls. I had a father, but I am pretty sure I was unaware that boys existed until I was well into my double digits.

My daughter? Not so much.

“Tsai?” she asks me while we are giving her two-month-old brother a bath, invoking her universal catch-all phrase that means “what’s that? Who? When? Where? And can I have a peanut butter sandwich?”

A little taken aback, I stumble, but quickly regroup. “Well, that is his penis.”

She nods. “I want a pini.”

“Well, Alan is a boy,” I explain. “That is why he has a penis. Girls have something else.”

She nods. “Tsai?”

“Girls have a vagina. Mommy is a girl. Daddy is a boy. Alan is a boy. Sammy is a girl.”

She nods. “Sammygina?”

Yes, I tell her, proud of myself for overcoming my first Scary Parenting Question No one Wants to Answer but Kind of Has To.

The only problem, of course, is that a two-year-old is not equipped to handle such exciting information. Now that she knows boys have pinis and girls have ginas, she wants to tell the world. This is done largely by pointing at crotches, especially in quiet places like Starbucks and shouting, “Boy! Boy! Anni (Alan) also boy! Pini! Pini,” gesturing wildly and pointing to everyone’s crotch.

I am hoping that her sense of decorum develops faster than her pronunciation.

I love my little Alan. His big gray eyes are framed by long black lashes. His chubby cheeks are sweet and round. I love to hold him and breathe in his yeasty, sweet baby warmth. But it is so different the second time around.

With Sam, I could scarcely wait to record every milestone—“Sam blinked twice today to indicate yes”; “Sam smiled at me when I showed her the red ball”; “Sam is wearing a blue dress today and it brings out her eyes” I wrote in breathy, excited emails to my husband several times daily.

This time? Not so much. I adore my Alan with all of the same mother-love intensity that I feel for my daughter, but his milestones are passing me by. I now have a 5.5-month-old who can almost sit, smiles all the time, puts his hands together, laughs, drools and grabs at things and I feel like I missed it all. I was there. I saw it all develop. But I also somehow missed it.

I guess that is the second child’s lot in life. He gets calm, cool, collected parents who know what we are doing, but misses the obsessive monitoring and attention his older sibling had in spades.

Maybe this is why second children are typically cooler than their older siblings. I was a first born and have spent my life fighting the compulsive competitiveness and perfectionism often attributed to we eldest kids. We break our parents in and are the recipients of all of their early parental intensity. Our younger siblings are free from the demands placed on us.

I was always jealous of my sister. She had it much easier in my mind, but now? I am less sure. I dominated dinner conversations, developed an early sense of self and confidence that she is still struggling to find. I blazed the trail she eventually followed.

Maybe things will be easier for Alan since he and his sister are different genders. As the only boy in our family, he has his own unique role. Besides, I may not pay as much attention to the small things, but, in many ways, I am a better mother to him—less prone to freak-outs, more chill. He gets cool mom while Sam gets all of my oldest daughter intensity.

Besides, he is pretty awesome in his own right.

In 2002, my husband was laid off from his first job, although he was not my husband then.

Then we were just a couple of crazy 24-year-olds living in a fabulous rented apartment. I came home everyday at lunch to eat with him and he worked out all afternoon. By the time he was rehired somewhere, he was buff and very happy with his (under) paid three-month vacation.

Now that the economy is in the tank, we are again facing the possibility of a layoff, only this time, the outlook is much more bleak. By nature, my husband’s work is well-paid, but volatile, dependent on the ebbs and flows of the national economy. When it dips, so do we.

Eight years ago, this hardly mattered. Now? It does. We are scrambling about; trying to create plans A, B, C and D in case the worst happens. This uncertainty is always painful, but when there are two small babes who are entirely dependent on their daddy and the bacon he brings home, it is downright terrifying.

This is the plight of the stay-at-home mom. I do make a decent income as a freelance writer, but I am also a contract employee and my work is volatile as well. Plus, there are health insurance and 401(k) s to consider.

I don’t know the exact moment that layoffs became scary instead of fun or when my responsibilities became so vast. All I know is this is being an adult. And sometimes I miss being a kid, burying my head under the covers and asking my dad: what recession?

Sasha Brown-Worsham is a freelance writer whose monthly column runs online at The Family Groove. Her work has appeared in Pregnancy, Runner's World, Self and many other publications. She lives in Boston with her husband, daughter, son (and a cat and dog).

My sister was camped out on our couch this weekend feeling low, low, low (in the words of Flo Rida).

Bad break up—nuff said.

Sam was very concerned about her Aunti. “Mar sad? Mar sad?” she asked again and again.

When we told her that, yes, Mar was sad, Sam sprung into action. She handed Mar her favorite blanket, her “ishy,” the one she screams for before she yells for either me or Rob when she falls. Then she grabbed her brother’s musical elephant, pulled the tail and placed it on Mar’s chest, hoping the tinny “rock a bye baby” that soothes her brother’s tears might also mend her auntie’s broken heart.

“There you go,” she said, satisfied with her efforts. When that still did not work, she sat down and patted Mar’s knee. “It’s all right, Mar,” she said. “It’s ok.”

All weekend, she doted on her auntie, brought her things and asked about her. A little mommy in the making, my girl is. For Auntie Mar, who really wanted to be alone, having a hovering toddler, may have been less pleasant.

Especially since I believe Auntie Mar spent the majority of her weekend looking at this:

I have never been one to hang onto a friendship that is not working. Life is way too short.

When I was pregnant with my first, one friend had become a bit of a psychic drag or, as my husband describes, “she was the least together person I’ve ever met who thinks she has it all figured out.”

Unfortunately, I was spending an inordinate amount of time with that one person, listening to all of her problems, helping her work them out, picking her up when she fell (sometimes literally back when she was younger) and watching her repeat the same mistakes over and over. She was a mess, but even worse, she thought she knew it all. She would tell me how to do things or how she planned to be as a mother.

“I am going to be a stay at home mom,” she announced to me one day over lunch. She had barely been dating her boyfriend a month and I was already pregnant with four years of marriage under my belt, but she made that lunch all about what she was going to do when she married the boy who had not even proposed. I did not get a word in about my own very real, very current problems.

And worse? She was actually sanctimonious about the decisions I was making in real-time. It was that lunch that made me cut the tie. I figured I would have enough people to take care of and she was the one who most had to go.

I have never once looked back, especially since making so many new mom friends. I advise all pregnant mothers to look at their lives and their friendships, deduce which ones are rotten and toss accordingly. I still have several close friends who do not have children and I value their friendships and advice more than ever.

My criteria for keeping a friendship:

1.) Is it worth the time it takes from my child to keep this friendship alive?
2.) Do I actually respect this person?
3.) Does this person bring something valuable to the table?
4.) Does this person make me feel good about myself?

If I answer no to any of these questions, I let them go. It may seem harsh, but as a mom, I only have time for the friendships that matter and will make it over the long haul.