Fighting off Frumpy

(Please tell me you read that title in the style of the  "Chili's baby back ribs" jingle , because that was totally the point. Ahem.) It truly is the weirdest thing, how the tables turn when your kids get older. When I started this blog back in 2009 (yes, I'm a blogging dinosaur), I was just desperate to reach out to other moms and find someone in my same boat. And that boat was no luxury yacht — it was more like a rickety canoe, springing random leaks and always under threat of capsizing. "Mommy" had become my entire identity. I couldn't pee alone. Something was  always  a mess. Someone always  needed me. I wanted nothing more than some time by myself, some silence in which to clear my thoughts, some space to remember who I was outside of somebody's mom. ... And then? I got all that. And it makes me want to cry. I know it's a total cliché, but as long and arduous (and sometimes downright torturous) as those years felt, it seems like I blinked an...