It is a good thing that little kids are cute.

Particularly my little kids. Because if they weren’t, I would have definitely off-loaded them to gypsies somewhere for a modest sum.

Primo is going through an unpleasant phase of life, which you will know if you read my post about the f@#king fours. Things are so bad with him at present that I may well send a plea to Supernanny. Although, as David observed, “If the Supernanny met our kids, she’d retire. She can’t handle this shit.”

When the kids are really awful, I like to deceive myself into thinking that they are just this way with me and David, and that they are very well-behaved when not in our care.

The bubble of my self-deception was punctured last week when my cousin, Alanna, who baby-sits the kids pretty regularly, said this:

“Your kids are bad, Nicole, like bratty, wild kid characters in Disney movies which are meant to be cautionary tales. Seriously.”

Oh, how I love hearing such confidence-boosting praise for my mothering!

Alanna gave me this feedback after she, along with my grandmother, watched the kids at night. David and I had a date with destiny at the Brooklyn Blogfest, where a bloggin’ good time was had, including blog dogs with mustard. But the point here is not what how much I can sound like Diablo Cody or what an impressive power couple David and I are, but that my children are disabled when it comes to going to sleep. Putting them to bed is like receiving electroshock therapy, and that is why we never ever force babysitters to endure it. But on this particular occasion, there was no avoiding it, and, we figured, there was not one but two capable caregivers on the job.

As far as I can tell, Primo just gave his usual bedtime performance which includes acting as though he just did a mammoth amount of speed as soon as the last page of the bedtime book has been read. He then does pike jumps and cannonballs off the bed, races around the apartment, hides in my closet, throws my clothes and shoes wildly to and fro, and scream with evil joy. This, of course, gets Seconda all pumped up, and soon both of them are wrestling on the floor, knocking shit over, banging their heads on furniture, wailing and yelling “I AM NOT GOING TO GO TO SLEEP -- EVER!”

My cousin and grandmother were horrified.

When I asked Primo the next morning about how bedtime went, he very calmly offered this explanation:

“I had to have a fit because Alanna told me to lie down but she didn’t say please, and the consequence of that is, you don’t get what you want.”

Like I said, it’s a good thing these kids are cute.

Happy Anniversary!

Yesterday was David and my six year wedding anniversary. Hooray for us! We like to joke that we’ve been together six years but it feels like sixty. If there was a “Which television couple are you?” quiz on Facebook, we would be the Honeymooners, for sure. But before my newlywed, non-parent friends get unduly alarmed about how kids crush the romance out of a marriage, let me hasten to say that feeling like you’ve been together sixty years isn’t a bad thing, necessarily.

Case in point: the terms by which David and I now address each other. When I’m not calling him “shithead” and he’s not calling me “nagshead” we usually refer to one another as “Mommy” and “Daddy” even when the kids are not present.

Now, I’m not proud of this. This is precisely the sort of thing I thought I would NEVER do before I had kids. I mean, its something people who have lost their selves in the process of becoming a parent do, something old, uninteresting people who never have sex do. It’s something my parents do.

But now I do it too, and there’s just no way around it.

David told me about one time when he was at the corner bodega, and the guy who works there and knows

David from his Friday night beer-runs, asked him why he was also buying Ben and Jerry’s this time.

“Just picking up something for Mom,” he replied.

“Is your mother visiting?’ the man asked.

But of course he was talking about me.

I’m not going to lie, That was a blow.

But it was also a year or two ago. And since that time, we’ve moved past the newness of this stage of our lives, and into the dense, deepening madness of it, And I have realized something.

Who gives a shit what we call each other? Who really has the energy to make sure that we’re addressing each other in quirky, romantic ways that keep our essential characters intact and shows respect for the people we are, apart from our roles as parents?

Its worrying about that crap that makes you old before your time and sucks the joie de vivre right out of you. Or at least that’s my position. What matters is that we are here, together, addressing each other at all, coming together even if in haphazard, clumsy ways, even if a trip to the dentist’s office, without kids, is considered a hot date, even if sex is accompanied by a Dora the Explorer soundtrack, even if the sentence “I love you” is too long to make it out without an interruption half the time. The joy of being together for six years going on sixty is that we don’t have to finish our sentences. David knows what I’m trying to say even if all I get through is, “Daddy, I love---” before an airborne Lego collides with my forehead.

When you’re married with young kids, the fastest way to ruin, I think, is to compare your marriage to any of its past incarnations. It’s a whole new paradigm. Less desirable in many ways, sure, but a hell of a lot better in others. At our anniversary brunch yesterday, I glanced over at this early twenty-something couple sitting at the table next to us, on a first or second date.

“That was great, thank you,” said the woman, who’d clearly blown out her hair that morning and had taken pains to pick out an appropriate not-too-skimpy-but-revealing-enough sundress for the occasion.

“No, thank you,” said her date, a man with no wrinkles in his button-down shirt.

Watching them, I felt exactly what they must feel when they pass me yelling at my screaming, snotty-face kids.

“I am SO glad not to be them,” I said to David.

“Me too,” said David, “I hated dating.”

“Well, I didn’t hate it. I liked it just fine. But been there, done that. I wouldn’t go back for anything,” I sipped my Bellini, “Honestly, I would rather sit here, arguing with you, than be on a first date again.”

And just like that, with the help of a little eggs benedict and a morning drink, we went from the Honeymooners to the other couple in When Harry Met Sally.

It’s the truth, too. We are, I'd dare to say, still crazy after all these years. David is my best friend and I’d rather be doing jack squat with him, I’d rather be wiping up vomit by his side than lounging in Rio with someone else. Sure, those singles at the restaurant get to look forward to hot, mystery sex, and breathtaking turns of romantic fate, the thrill of discovering someone and being discovered themselves but they also have to wade through all that awful not-knowing, the unbearable lightness of being uncommitted. And though the weight of my family sometimes feels like a ton of bricks dragging me down, its an anchor. And I know. I know that Big Daddy—I mean, David -- and I are tied together, old-school style, by which I mean irrevocably and forever. Maybe not the way I imagined it six years ago, but exactly the way I like it today.