People with more than two children, I am forever in awe of you. People with one child, don’t come bitchin to me about how hard it is. When you have more than one, there’s a strange multiplication factor in effect. It’s called sibling rivalry. And it totally sucks.

You just want to pull your little one up by the short hairs and scream, “Look, I love you unconditionally. Why can’t you get that through your thick head?” But that may be a tad counterproductive. The competition for my attention is driving me crazy.

I received a nice respite from it last night and today. Girl went to a sleep over at a friend’s house, followed by a birthday party. I got to stay home. With no one to fight with, Boy has been peacefully slaughtering aliens on his PSP. The house is quiet and restful.

She’ll be back any time, and I really miss her. I missed snuggling her in bed last night. But, God, the break was fantastic. Not from her, but from the tension. I’m afraid to ask my other mom friends how long this will last. I think I know the answer.

It has something to do with one of them going away to college.

My favorite superhero is Elastigirl, the mom in the cartoon movie “The Incredibles.” She’s tough, smart, practical and not afraid to tell her 300-pound gorilla of a husband to get a grip. Plus, she’s extremely flexible, which is a key attribute in top performing mothers, as they say in HR parlance.

There’s a scene in the Incredibles where Elastigirl explains to her two superhero children about the importance of identity. “It’s your most valuable possession,” she tells them as she hands them black masks. “Guard it with your life.” (This may not be a direct quote; I don’t feel like watching the movie for the 29th time to find out.)

I wish I had such a black mask, and that I could shield my children with such a simple prop. It would certainly help in writing a personal blog for all the world to see.

By day, I am a mild-mannered public relations professional working in downtown Houston. By night I am the harried mother of two bright, creative, exhausting children. To protect their identities, I refer to them in this blog by the highly original pseudonyms of Boy and Girl.

I am also the wife of a talented journalist/gardener/geek/blogger named Bob who long ago outted himself on the web (I mean this figuratively). So I feel no compunctions about protecting his identity. But I will be kind to him in my writing because he deserves that.

This blog is about the things that circle around in my mind like wild animals and threaten to bite me unless I let them loose. Mostly it’s about the torn feeling that comes when I kiss my babies goodbye and get on the bus. The fact that this modern life often makes absolutely no sense. And the need to make it make sense just the same. Those are the sorts of ramblings to be found here.

I hope you enjoy reading this blog. Knowing that my friends, family and co-workers are reading it keeps me honest and makes me avoid certain topics that could get me fired or shunned. But there’s a wide world to write about, and I’m certain I can find subjects that are both safe and emotionally jarring at the same time.

So that’s the balancing act I am performing. If I just had a little black mask, this would be a whole lot easier.

I consider it a good day if I get to do one of my favorite things — writing, yoga and TMI. (My third favorite thing is personal, and definitely too much information for the family members who read this blog.)

So here’s why I feel guilty today — none of these things involves my children. I read some other mommy bloggers and their favorite things are making scrapbooks of their children’s photos, throwing the world’s best birthday party, and taking their children to Wiggles on Ice. I could pretend I like doing that stuff, but I’d be lying.

I’m happy when the soccer game gets rained out, I hide some of the birthday invitations on the top of the fridge, I don’t want to ever see anything on ice. I’m just not a very good mommy, I’m afraid.

Yesterday I blogged about how editors copy what other editors are doing, and that’s why the news seems transmogrified into one giant blob called the media. That’s a gross oversimplification and I was trying to be humorous, but on a very basic level, that’s what everyone does. Moms study other moms and read mommy magazines, books and blogs because we’re all asking ourselves the same question — AM I DOING THIS RIGHT??

I don’t recognize myself in those magazines, books and blogs. As for the moms I study, most of them put on a really good mommy face. Much happier than mine.

So maybe I should ask my family to give me a performance review like the one at work, with core competencies, goals and objectives. First I would have to explain what those things mean, and I don’t really want to get into the difference between a goal and an objective with a 5-year-old, so that could bog things down a bit. I could just say to my family, how am I doing?

Here’s what their answers would be:

– Girl: Not spending enough time pushing me on the swing
– Boy: Not trying hard enough to find me during hide and seek
– Husband: Not enough TMI

After a marathon of Star Wars movies new and old, my kids brandish sticks in the soggy back yard — they are Sithe Lords, out to slaughter all the Jedi. Should I worry about this, I ask my husband. No, he answers. One word, no elaboration. They’re not out to save the galaxy today — they’re aching for destruction. Guess that’s what happens when they’ve been cooped up in the house for a day, waiting for the rain to end.

How much time, energy and money should we spend entertaining our bored, chubby, grumpy children? That’s a question I ponder quite a lot, especially on a rainy day with a mountain of laundry staring down at me.

It was too wet for our 7:30 a.m. soccer game (what sadist came up with that schedule?) but we still gathered in the club’s rec room later that morning for team photos. The place was overrun with kids in cleats and maroon shirts — what they were going to do all day long with all that raw, pent up energy, I wondered. One mom was taking her kids to Disney on Ice. Another, movies. A third, the mall. I started thinking, maybe bad weather could drive us out of the recession — if all soccer games in this country were canceled, American parents would spend gazillions of dollars on the weekends entertaining their kids.

At the risk of sounding 100 years old, I don’t remember my mother being so concerned about boredom. When we whined about being bored, my mom would say, go play outside. I heard Magic Johnson on the radio the other day, talking about an organization he had started to help fight childhood obesity. He said his mother would tell him to go outside and don’t come back inside until the streetlights came on. When my husband Bob was six, he used to ride his bicycle so far out into the Indiana countryside — by himself — that the doctor’s wife, shocked to see such a little boy so far afield, made him put his bike in her car and drove him home. When she tattled to Bob’s mom that he was riding about 10 miles away, her reaction was pretty much, “So?”

Yes, I know it’s a different world now. I don’t let my son ride his bike in our neighborhood, much less into the the countryside. There are at least two pedophiles in our neighborhood, Bob looked it up in a database. We see older kids riding their bikes around and Bob says, when are you going to let Boy do that. I say, never. I sort of mean it.

Boy is reading chapter books, and in these books, a group of friends meets together everyday by the big birch tree and solves mysteries. What country is this supposed to be set in? Is there a place in the United Sates where a pack of second graders can roam freely around town, poking their noses into abandoned houses, without courting disaster?

So yes, we parents are completely overprotective but we have our justifications. The price we pay for safety is bored, chubby, grumpy kids who cost a lot of money to entertain.

But the sun is shining today. Girl is lying on the couch and Boy is stabbing her with a light saber. Channeling my mother I holler, “GO PLAY OUTSIDE!”