By Raakhee Mirchandani for The Today Show

My 7-year-old daughter Satya takes up a lot of space in the world. Literally. Her stuff is everywhere.

Every surface of the apartment is covered in the things that fill her life: notebooks, my vintage copies of "The Baby-Sitters Club,"squishies, scrunchies and paradindis. Bindis share space with slime and graphic novels, side by side, all of them equal parts of what this little girl is made of.

By Raakhee Mirchandani for Market Watch

What I really want for Mother’s Day is to spend a day with a handle of Tito’s and the stack of books teetering on the edge of my nightstand. Or to binge “Workin’ Moms” and “Never Have I Ever” with a bagel and a latte, immediately followed by a showing of “Becoming” on Netflix with a burrito. 

By Raakhee Mirchandani for Elle Magazine

It’s the mother of all scheduling conflicts. You head to work and while you're out hustling, your kid does something amazing. For the first time. Literally something they will never do again, in that same way, and you've missed it.

By Raakhee Mirchandani for Elle Magazine

Another school lunch to pack, another day I fill my daughter's tiffin with poopie.

I don't set out to send her to school with a sack full of shit—I spend time making the daal, chopping the veggies and simmering and sautéing everything in just the right amount of herbs and spices. But any way I slice it, my daughter's friends think her lunch looks like crap.

By Raakhee Mirchandani for Elle Magazine

Most days I'm a fine mom: Satya, my 3-year-old is fed, mostly clean and laughs more than she cries. She has more veggies than cheese in her tummy, enough crayons on her easel and an unhealthy obsession with both Wonder Woman and FLOTUS. I love seeing the big wide world through her little eyes—kids have the crazy ability to find little bits of happiness in every situation and I'm naturally a more glass-is-half-empty-holy-shit-fill-the-fucking-glass kind of person.

By Raakhee Mirchandani for Elle Magazine

When my 3-year-old daughter wakes up on Christmas morning, there will be no presents to unwrap under the Christmas tree. There will no unboxing videos, no tears because we couldn't find a Hatchimal, and no chance that I wasted a minute of sleep or single breath on fulfilling a list of demands targeted to a portly stranger from the North Pole.

By Raakhee Mirchandani for Elle Magazine

She was inconsolable. The tears were streaming down her face, the stress was palpable: "I don't want to President, I want to be me!" Satya shrieked, her tiny little face red with worry.

This one was on me. I had laid out a sweet little "Future President" t-shirt, complete with a tutu and a pair of Doc Martens. It was #toddlerswag, #outfitgoals and whatever else moms much cooler than me would call it.

By Raakhee Mirchandani for NBC News

It’s the same sweet scene most morning: Agan stands over the sink, fabric in hand, stretching it and then wrapping it, carefully placing the thick black cotton in perfect folds on his head.

It’s methodical, deliberate, and badass.

By Raakhee Mirchandani for Elle Magazine

It was bedtime and I was reading "The Story of Ruby Bridges" to my almost 3-year-old daughter Satya. She was wiggling and squirming, picking things out of places I would rather not mention. A little frustrated—like, hello, little toddler, don't you see me totally killing this parenting thing right now?—I let her have it, "Satya, if you don't want to listen to mama, I can just stop reading." She sat back down. The kid loves story time.

By Raakhee Mirchandani for Elle Magazine

A few months ago, a friend said she potty trained her daughter in a single weekend. I myself was a few weeks into the toilet training ordeal with my own toddler, bribing her with everything from chocolates and Elmo videos to a selection of fresh-out-the-box toys, including a massive plastic Doc McStuffins veterinary clinic that took my husband an hour to put together. I briefly considered giving her $100 per toilet turd.

By Raakhee Mirchandani for Elle Magazine

Things never seem to move fast enough. People in the street walk too slowly. I always call a restaurant at least twice between the time the order is placed and my buzzer actually rings and no matter how hard I try, it takes me less than five minutes to inhale my lunch, each lettuce leaf hurtling like an express train down my throat. It's not ladylike, but it's effective.

By Raakhee Mirchandani for Elle Magazine

My daughter Satya and I talk about lots of things. She's 2.5 — the .5 is important, she's very clear about that — so our daily musings vary between the importance of pooping in the potty, rather than next to it, if dogs are better than cats (they are, duh), and if butterflies and bumblebees have mamas that make them eat broccoli. But earlier this week we had a different conversation. It seemed ridiculous not to talk about it, given the tragic scene in Orlando last week.