In case any of you have or are considering having very small children, here is a list of things I have found to be true that I was not properly informed of ahead of time...
1) Without being too graphic, if you are a man of average height, right around three years-old, your child's head and flailing arms will be perfectly in line with your man parts. If you couple this with what appears to be the accuracy of an Air Force missile lock, you can go ahead and expect a direct hit on the daily. To prove my point - I took a walking head butt to the zipper on Thursday, a swinging toy horse to the no-nos yesterday, and flying elbow drop today that made me want to curl up and pray for the sweet release of death.
2) Apparently, the fact snot is not honey that comes from within is a learned thing. I assumed only the gross little kids would walk around licking their runny noses. This is very, very false. I'm not sure what age we start reaching for a tissue (or even a sleeve) instead, but it isn't three. Now, before any of you claim I only think this because my daughter IS the gross little kid in class, I can tell you...I already investigated this possibility. They all do it...and they do it with vigor and zeal.
3) Think very, very hard before you bring up that idea you just know they'll love. Odds are, being the great parent you are, you are right and they will love it. That's the problem. You'll introduce a silly song or fun new game because you love hearing them laugh. Unfortunately, two and a half hours later, they are just getting warmed up on their thousandth repetition of it. By this point, you have already exhausted all patience, energy, and any excuses you could come up with to stop playing it. I kid you not, last week I was about four seconds away from faking food poisoning because I couldn't stand playing Princess and Dragon (a game where Amelia - the princess, likes to lock me- the dragon, in various "castles") any longer.
4) If you get to the point where you have two children, a funny type of math occurs. Having two kids is not twice as hard as having one. It is ten times as hard. And when both kids are sick at the same time, it is approximately three-hundred times as hard. That said, if both kids should end up with the stomach bug at the same time, there is no math to explain the relative toughness of this situation compared to the norm...just pour yourself a stiff drink and begin to reconcile with the fact that life as you know it is temporarily over.
5) Luckily, this same exponential phenomenon applies to the positive things as well. You love child one "this much". You love child two "that much" (which naturally are different, but equal). However, when you see child one positively interacting with child two, you love the sum of those parts far, far more than "this much" plus "that much". The only time this doesn't apply is if one of this children is sick and the other is healthy. At that point, you simply instruct the healthy child to treat the sick one like a 13th century leper.
6) Your child's brain is a sponge. You work long hours, donate bodily fluids, and sell your things to creepy people on Craigslist in order to afford child care. So, naturally, you already value education. That said, what you didn't count on was for every thing your child's wonderful teachers show them, they will learn seven other things from their knucklehead friends. Just when you start to burst with pride as your child counts to ten in Spanish, it comes crashing down as they call you a "poopybutt" or lick your arm, claiming to be a cat.
Having kids is the greatest thing in the world. They are smarter, funnier, and even snugglier than you can ever imagine...but, you probably already knew that.
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