[INAUDIBLE], come sit.
Come sit.
Put your hands down.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Take it off.
Oh!
[LAUGHTER]
I'm Sarah Foster, and this is "Mom Diaries."
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I have two girls, which is my payback in life.
My mom used to always tell me when
I was a teenager, like, you're going to have daughters,
and it is going to be payback.
And I'd just be like, I will have boys.
Valentina is 11.
We call her V V. She's only Valentina if she's in trouble.
Josie is 6.
She's Josephine when she's in trouble.
If you were going to describe me in three words--
Oh, god.
--as a mom, what would three words be?
Funny.
OK.
Bad cook.
Mean.
Go ahead.
Now say something nice.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Uh.
Nothing nice?
The mornings are pure chaos.
Every morning, it's like I am pleading
and begging them to get up.
It's like a negotiation.
And then I start making school lunches.
And my kids are not the kind of kids
where you can just throw in some animal crackers and a carrot
stick.
They want gourmet [BLEEP] in their snack.
OK, my 11-year-old is a vegan.
You try cooking for an 11-year-old vegan, it's brutal.
So didn't sleep great, but it's going to be a long day.
[INAUDIBLE] makes breakfast, so that's a huge win for me.
Because I do the school lunches.
He does the breakfast.
This is normally what he does, oatmeal.
Josie is a creature of habit.
She loves these brioche rolls.
Today, I'm going to put a turkey burger in the brioche roll,
maybe some chips and hummus.
Luckily, the 11-year-old now can dress herself
and do her own hair.
V V, are you dress?
Yes.
Oh, your hair looks cute.
I"m not going to wear it like that.
No, no.
Yes.
Why?
It looks so cute.
Josie, she has terrible style.
For a while, she was digging out of the dirty clothes
to wear the same sweater every day, stains on it from food.
And it would be like, I have to wear that sweater.
So we're usually late to school every morning.
Headed to school right now, but we're probably
not going to be on time.
And whose fault is that?
Yours.
It's not my fault. When you're a mom,
what will you do differently than what I do?
I don't want to be a mom.
I want to live life and be free.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The second they're the last ones out of the car,
but I'm like [SIGHS] Three days a week, two minimum,
I'll drop them off, and I'll go to the gym.
And I'll work out for 45, 50 minutes.
And then I'll usually go to Erin's, my sister.
We have a fashion brand, which is called Favorite Daughter.
And then we have our podcast.
So not only am I trying to work on my time management
with work stuff, but then I don't ever
want to miss a parent-teacher conference.
I don't ever want to miss taking them at school.
I don't ever want to miss putting them to bed,
unless of course you have to.
But I'm really gone all day.
After school activities, I'm usually not there for.
That's just how it is.
Because I'm building my businesses.
Josie is doing a little performance.
Becoming a mom and having children, it changes your life.
And it should.
You are no longer the most important person
in your universe.
You're just not.
There are curveballs all the time.
And the way that I handle curveballs is, well,
first of all, I'm really lucky, because I live in a city
where my family lives.
My mom lives here.
I genuinely don't know what I would do without my mom.
Ooh.
Hi, Grandma.
It's a Memory Match.
It is really important that my kids
have relationships with all their extended family
all over the world.
I love that the Amazon Glow creates a virtual shared space
to learn, play games, and create with remote friends and family.
Yeah.
Whoa!
Art.
They feel like they're actually in the same room with loved
ones.
Finish my sentence.
Oh, god.
I'm going to draw what I'm really good at.
Two hearts.
Grandma knows how to draw hearts.
I love you, Josie.
Oh.
Oh my gosh, how cool is that?
You vacuum--
[INAUDIBLE]
It's a vacuum to delete everything.
It's like an interactive projector.
You can help me draw Grandma.
OK.
I'm not looking well.
Wow.
That's a-- Josie, she's an artist.
I don't know what else to say.
It's so much better than just a video call.
And listen, it's really hard for me.
But I really don't pick my kids up from school.
It's that time.
It's that 3:00 PM time.
I'm at work.
They're OK with it.
They're like, Mom works.
Mom works, and that's cool that Mom works.
And so after the sports, they'll come home.
Josie, I bathe.
We do bath time and our whole thing.
And that's when I can finally get her to start opening up
about her day.
Subconsciously or I guess consciously, I
have created a thing with my girls
where they tell me everything, I mean, down
to the littlest thing.
I mean, she'll come home, and she'll be like,
oh, George looked at me funny today,
and I feel like-- what do you think that means?
And I'm like, what do you mean?
He looked at-- show me the look.
You know, I'm like-- she's like, well, he did this thing.
And I'm like, oh my God, this is all I ever wanted,
because I didn't do that with my mom.
Raising kids is so hard.
And I don't care how many parenting books
you read, it's all relative, because not every kid is
the same.
When I found out I was pregnant, I immediately
was like, oh my God, I am way too selfish to be a mother.
I like to do what I want to do, when I want to do it.
How am I going to take care of another human
and still stay in bed all day?
I just didn't know what kind of mom I would be.
Cut to I am really strict.
My kid is the only kid.
She's going to be 12.
She's in fifth grade.
She's the only kid in her whole class
that doesn't have a phone.
And she'll come home, and she'll be
like, you're the meanest mom.
You're the meanest mommy, the meanest dad.
I hate you guys.
And I remember that feeling of, when you're a kid, you
think they hate.
And they don't realize that it's all for them.
What's the Zoom link thing?
I'm sorry.
I'm really bad at this.
I'm sorry, Rebecca.
Get into your [INAUDIBLE].
The second I get off my phone call,
you decide to come in here and disturb it.
Get away.
I'm going to go on Instagram for a bit.
It's not really letting me into my Zoom meeting.
I'm really sorry.
We meet at the dinner table usually around 7:00.
It doesn't always happen, but I think
mandating dinners are together I think is so nice.
Can you believe I let you stay up this late?
I don't know who-- is like bed time is so beautiful,
and bedtime is so glorious and so sweet.
[INAUDIBLE]
Josie, did you brush your hair?
Bedtime sucks.
Bedtime is a nightmare.
I have to beg them to go to bed.
They don't want to go to bed.
I'm really strict about bedtime.
And other nights are easier than others.
And tonight is just--
it's not going to be great.
They're always hungry 30 seconds before bedtime.
All of a sudden, it's like, I'm starving.
It's like, well, you should have eaten more dinner.
I know we all say this about our kids.
We're like, they have the most special qualities.
There's no kids like them.
But I really think there's no kids like them.
You locked me on the staircase.
Stay on the stairs.
Oh, but-- I didn't lock.
The stairs are an open space.
There was no locking.
No.
Uh-uh.
This is an ambush.
She's wrong.
When we were little, we had a gate on the-- we had a gate.
We had a gate on the stairs.
So that you guys didn't fall and break your necks.
Hmm-mm.
That was for your safety.
Oh, sure.
Also--
OK, we're done.