In their quest to discover the truth about where my heart really lies, my children are sneaky.

It sucks to be a second child. Being a first child myself, I always kind of knew this, but it wasnt until recently that Ive really come to understand just how hard it is.When I was a kid, I used to torture my poor little brother. My favorite line to use on him was that I was bigger, faster, smarter and stronger, and it made no difference to me whatsoever that I was only conferred those advantages because Id been born three and a half years before him. I didnt care that one day he would most certainly be bigger, faster, stronger, and maybe even smarter than me. At the time, he wasnt, and I let him know it whenever I got the chance. It wasnt until I took Psych 101 in college that I even thought about the damage I might have done to his self-esteem. But now that Im the parent of a big sister/little brother, Im really starting to see how awful it must have been.

Theres something about the second kid – well, second in my case, but I guess what I really mean is the last kid – that just makes you want to baby them.

There are lots of difficult things you have to figure out when youre a parent. For example, how do you clean puke out of a shag carpet? What do you do with a pee-soaked mattress? Also, is it possible to get marbles out of a toilet? But oh, if only all of the problems of parenthood could be easily solved with a quick search of ehow, or a frantic call to Roto Rooter.