a great mother

From a babysitter's blog, I found this post on large families and thought this passage in particular was a neat way to look at it:

"I heard a great little dvar torah recently that I found applicable to this situation. It says “Ishto Kigafno” That a wife should be like a vineyard. Now there are different types of trees. There are the really strong ones with no fruit. Then there are the fruit trees with a lesser strength of wood. Then there is the vineyard, which is the weakest type of wood. The vineyard gives all its strength to its fruits. So when it says the wife should be like a vineyard, it means a great mother is one that cares for her children and gives all her strength over to them.

Which is why if a husband comes home and sees the wife sleeping on the couch with all the kids running around wild, he should know what a great wife she is. That she has given over all her energy over to her kids, like a vineyard. So the husband gets it good, when he comes home from work, the wife has already done all the work and cared for the kids, now he gets to enjoy them. "