A few months ago, I was in the grocery store roaming the bread isle. Wheat, white, pita, English muffins ... Boring, boring, boring. And, then I spotted it: Goldfish Sandwich Bread. There, right in between the milk and the exotic food aisle, I squealed. Bread, in the shape of a giant Goldfish cracker?! My kids would be psyched!! This was the best trip to Safeway EVER!!! Wooo-hooo!

And, then it hit me: I am such a mother. 

I asked my friends for their "motherhood moments" and the answers made me laugh -- I can relate to every single one ... What about you?

It seems like only yesterday that I was a surly teenager. Ah, the glory days. Too many hormones, so many exciting things to learn and do, and, as always, so many feelings to be hurt. Especially my parents.

I didn't understand it at the time -- mostly because I wasn't a parent (thankfully), but I now know that special breed of hurt that comes with parenting a teenager.

Rather than weep and gnash our teeth, I think it's time to get a little humor out of it all.

Here are 10 reasons your teenager hates you.

I'd been outside, happily gardening, for the last few hours. Getting lost in my garden is one of my favorite past times and one of the few ways I can decompress. I'm not so much a yoga person -- I'm much more a "break stuff and haul it around" kinda girl. It works well.

When I went inside I saw my eldest standing there watching television while the smaller kids both snuggled up in their beds.

"Okay Ben," I said nicely. "Time to brush your teeth and get ready for bed." Not an unreasonable request, considering it was half an hour past his bed time.

"FINE," he nearly screamed, stomping off to the bathroom to brush his teeth, rolling his eyes along the way. Why the attitude?

What just HAPPENED?

The Tween Years. That's what happened. Here's how I am coping with the preteen attitude.

As parents we spend years teaching our children that they need to obey and follow the rules, but almost as important is giving them the skills and sense of self to know when it's okay to break those same rules at the right time. An 11-year-old boy in Massachusetts, Jared Flanders, recently provided a perfect example of disobedience that would make any parent proud.

According to a story on MSNBC, the boy was alone at his home in Worcester, Massachusetts, with orders not to leave the house. But then something moved him to the point he just had to do it. It wasn't for candy or to go meet up with a friend or anything else your typical 11-year-old might sneak out to go do, however. Instead Jared was driven by a mission of compassion.

The parenting world is all aflutter over an 8-year-old "political activist" who faced down Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. Word has it little Elijah gave the anti-gay candidate what for on behalf of his lesbian mom, and the whole family is enjoying their time as national heroes with their video gone viral. Which begs the question: America, did we see the same video?

Because I didn't see an 8-year-old activist. I saw a parenting fail of the first order.

Think your savvy, jaded kid is ready to learn the truth about Santa Claus? Guess again. You may want to delay pulling back the curtain on the Jolly One -- at least for another year. I wish I had, anyway.

Last year, when my son was almost 7 (you know, the "age of reason"), he started pestering us about Santa, wanting to know if he was a real person. We could have kept the legend going. It wouldn't have been that hard. But instead I followed some parenting advice I'd heard and it TOTALLY BACKFIRED.

I've always heard warnings that you shouldn't let your kids watch the news with you, because it's just not appropriate for the little ones. And now one Chicago TV news anchor has made it so. Yes, Virginia, there is a Grinch! Her name is Robin Robinson, and right slam bang in the middle of a broadcast of the news, she uttered the four words that fill American parents with dread: "There is no Santa."

Come on now! Doesn't she know the cardinal rule of Kris Kringle?

There's a reason baby books include those extra special Baby and Toddler Milestone prompts where moms can fill in the dates her kid finally holds his head up, smiles, laughs, rolls over, sits up, crawls, walks, etc. Now that my kids are almost 9 and 5, I realize how much I needed the candy-coated, over-inflated celebratory nature of those milestone markers to distract myself from the fact that I was still very much "in it." Pssst, because what no one tells you back then is that for every Baby and Tot "milestone," your job just gets harder -- at least for a little while anyway.

The path to here has been a wild ride, and now that my boys are finally Big Kids and both in school, it gives me pause. Sure, I miss their little baby faces and their tiny baby bodies, but more than anything I am so dang thankful to have made it to the phase where the Milestones actually mean some aspects of my mom life are getting easier.

Now that's something to be thankful for -- am I right?