Book of Bulmash, chapter 101

1. After recovering from her youngest child's latest tomfoolery, the mother cast her thoughts back to a time nearly lost in the mists of memory:
2. To the days in which she parented only one child.
3. Then were the days of tenderness and learning, every milestone a first for mother and babe.
4. The first baby was full of smiles and musical burblings, and he snuggled unto his mother like a champ.
5. Yet the mother found herself seized by anxiety.
6. For she delighted so deeply in her child that she feared she would burden him with her affection, yea, to the point of smothering.
7. The mother and father discussed the possibility of bringing another babe into the home.
8. For it seemed to them that parenting was, all things considered, not THAT hard.
9. Soon the new babe arrived, an infant who soon grew robust in size and noise.
10. Then the parents did learn a hard lesson, that two children are far more challenging than one,
11. And also that a second child may reveal a will strong enough to try the patience of ten adults.
12. So after yet another difficult bedtime, the mother soothed her frayed nerves with the fruit of the vine and the cocoa bean.
13. Suddenly, she found herself thunderstruck with the irony of her children's unconquerable wills, in the face of her futile attempts at discipline.
14. "Verily," the mother murmured, "I have done this thing unto myself."