When you’re pregnant they send you to Lamaze class to teach you how to breathe, push and get through labor without maiming your partner. But how many times in your life do you use those skills? Two, three, maybe four times tops for most families. Why don’t they teach some skills you’ll need everyday once baby makes the big entrance into the world. Such as how to:
1. Open and hold a door that opens out with one hand while with the other hand push an unwieldy stroller loaded with a screaming toddler through it.
2. Administer liquid antibiotic to a protesting child without it getting spilled or spit back into your face.
3. Politely, but firmly refuse unsolicited parenting advice when Great Aunt Nan insists that your baby needs a sweater when it’s 85 degrees outside.
4. Wash, shampoo and condition in the shower in two minutes, because any longer and your unattended kids will kill each other.
5. Make up a new, shorter story that goes with the illustrations in that 50-page picture book.
6. Remain expressionless and stare straight ahead without making eye contact with all the other grocery store customers who are gawking at your three-year old who just opened a box macaroni and dumped it on his head.
7. Slay the dragon in the closet and the bear under the bed.
8. Balance a fast food tray with one arm and hold a baby on your hip with the other without spilling all the cups of soda.
9. Remain lucid when you’ve only slept four hours in the last three days.
10. Catch projectile vomit with your hands without gagging yourself, thus preventing it from ruining the train table in Barnes and Noble.
I love these! I’d also add that you should be able to stop yourself from snorting or eye rolling when random people ask you when you are going to have another one.
So awesome. And SO TRUE!
This list is begging to be made into a book for first time parents!
I have to do #1 all of the time. And don’t you hate when people just stare rather than opening the door for you?