Wow. I really am a bit of a negligent mummy after all. I brought Jonas to the doctor on Friday to examine his goopy parts and it turns out he has a blocked tearduct in his eye (hence the thrice-hourly wipings) and a granuloma on his belly button. I’m not quite sure what a granuloma is, but suffice it to say it needed a generous application of silver nitrate to help it dry up.

Silver nitrate, silver nitrate... rings a bell. Was that the stuff I huffed out of a balloon at that Grateful Dead concert in Vermont in the early ‘90s? Maybe not, but whatever it was, it turned his navel black. Eww.

Not only that but I just noticed the other day that Asher’s fingernail is about to fall off - the stomach-churning result of an "accidental" finger slamming committed by Abby a few weeks ago. Seriously, I could just puke I feel so bad. How could I not have noticed that?

After a serious pow-pow over the weekend, Dan and I are recommitting ourselves to parenting all of our kids in a happy and constructive and non-yelling way. Now that the newborn fog is beginning to clear, we no longer have any excuse. In the hopes of ratcheting up my mommy skills, I decided to seek out some expert help. As always, I turned to The Learning Channel in my time of need.

So I watched that show about the crazy Duggar family with 17 kids and was amazed by the sheer calmheadedness that mom Michelle manages to maintain in the face of stunning adversity. Surely, she contends with multiple goopy children on any given day, and still the kids all appear to be in decent health. Laundry gets done, lessons are taught, boo-boos are kissed and dinner’s on the table at 6. Ridiculous!

But I wasn’t looking for inspiration in terms of handling it all or juggling the demands of motherhood – sticking to my Anti-Multi-Tasking Manifesto has been working quite well! – but rather a way to keep a smile on my face in the midst of everything. You see, it’s not the size of the Duggar family that’s really so incredible to me, or even how they manage to get it all done, but rather the apparent happiness and joy with which they parent. I know it’s probably edited to death – maybe they leave out the parts where mom and dad dangle any rogue misbehavers over the balcony and threaten to drop them – but I somehow have the sense that they actually know what they’re doing.

I even went to the Duggar Family website to see if they had any tips to offer a mere mom of three like me who growls and grumbles at her kids when they’re really not being that bad, and who unreasonably expects her two-and-a-half-year old to understand what she’s going through. (Somehow, Asher is not sympathetic to how short-tempered I can get when I only sleep four hours a night.)

All I could determine aside from the intense scheduling and chore-sharing and task delegation which seem to make their home run smoothly, is that Michelle is dedicated to having a "meek spirit." At first I was horrified. Sounds pretty awful, right? But I think what she means is this: In order to be happy and calm, one must give oneself over completely to the chaos of having children. Accept it, embrace it, delight in it, don’t fight it... and you too can enjoy the blessings of parenthood without any of the stress and anger.

Let’s try it tonight and see if it works...