What was your parenting fantasy before you had kids? How different is it to what you experience daily?

Perhaps you visioned preparing a creatively delicious healthy dinner and your children eagerly gobbled it up glowing brighter with inner health, bite by bite. Instead, they whine and complain about not having mac n cheese and how disgusting vegetables are.

Maybe you dreamed that your children stopped fighting because you learned that new technique about sibling rivalry. And the next second they are yelling and at each other again.

How do you handle the discrepency between your fantasy and your reality? Is it possible to still find the joy?