Another area of “mom” life that often causes the grumpies is middle-of-the-night waking. Whether a baby needs to be fed, a bed is wet, or someone has the stomach flu, moms are often up around the clock. I always felt frustrated when one of my children would call to me in the night, and I wondered why I could not be more like my mother, who treated me with such love and gentleness when I awakened her (I seriously thought she enjoyed when I came into her room at 3 am).

Then one day I had a talk with a friend who said she loved being up at night with her children because it gave her the opportunity to spend one-on-one time with each child. I thought she was joking, but as we continued our conversation, I realized that if I do not like getting up at night, at least I can tell myself that I do.

Back in high school, I noticed that every time I said or thought the word “test,” my shoulders would get tense. I decided to refer to all exams as “opportunities.” On my way to a calculus test, I remember telling a friend, “This is going to be a wonderful opportunity to see how much we have learned these past few weeks.” She looked at me as though I had integrals and derivatives tattooed to my forehead, but the word “opportunity” somehow made the whole experience more amusing.

This is the principle I have tried to apply to nighttime waking: whenever one of my children needs me at night, I think, “What a wonderful opportunity to spend some one-on-one time with him (or her)!” This is assuming I am in a thinking state and not merely sleep-walking down the hall. Though I do everything in my power to encourage my children to get through the night without me, and though my husband takes turns with the night duty, this one change in my thinking has made me a much happier mom.

One final area in which a positive title has made a difference is in home cleaning and clutter control. As a college student living in my own apartment, I did cleaning checks once a month and straightened up my room every couple of weeks. When I became the mother of a toddler, I felt like all I did was follow my daughter around the apartment—picking up the contents of every cupboard she emptied (as renters, we were not allowed to drill child locks into our cupboards).

I remember the afternoon when I spoke to my mother on the phone and complained to her about all the messes my little one was making. She counseled me, “When you look at each mess, just think of it as the result of growth and development. Even though you wish the apartment would stay clean, aren’t you glad that your daughter has the desire to explore and the ability to walk?” I had to agree—even though I had just put all of her clothes back in her drawers for the sixth time that week.

Now, when I see papers and crayons on the kitchen table, toy cars scattered in the living room, and even toilet paper rolls unrolled all over the bathroom, I smile (sometimes it is not a genuine smile, I’ll admit) and say, “What a wonderful display of growth and development!”

The “Fly Lady,” who many of you may have heard of, is an expert in keeping her home clean. She has several books and products and runs the website www.flylady.com. One thing I admire about her is that she calls cleaning house “home blessing.” We are not expected (and we do not expect our children) to find deep joy and satisfaction in toilet cleaning and diaper changing—it is not always the chores themselves that bring a sense of accomplishment, but the overall result: blessing our homes. When we can look past the jobs we do not specifically enjoy and see them for what they really are, and for what they are doing for our families, we will feel less stress about doing them.

An easy response to the daily tasks of motherhood is, “I am too good for this! Why should I have to do chores all the time? The messes are overwhelming! Can everyone just leave me alone and stay clean?” However, we need to remember that sustaining life is valuable work. The point of this article is not to enforce gender stereotypes or convince women that they should do ALL the housework and do it happily. Every job has its unpleasant parts, and whether you do many jobs or one job, the work you do by providing a safe, clean, loving home for children is just as noble as other life-sustaining jobs (doctors, police officers, fire fighters…). Giving our responsibilities more exciting titles may sound silly, but it works, and it is no sillier than calling a strip of gray asphalt something better than Stinky Shoe Lane.