1. Women: to prepare for maternity, put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front. Leave it there for 9 months. After 9 months, take out 10% of the beans. Men: to prepare for paternity, go to the local pharmacist, tip the contents of your wallet on the counter, and tell the pharmacist to help himself. Then go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home. Pick up the paper. Read it for the last time.
2. Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels, and how they have allowed their children to run riot. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behavior. Enjoy it - it'll be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.
3. To discover how the nights will feel, walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 lbs. At 10pm put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, till 1am. Put the alarm on for 3am. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a drink. Go to bed at 2.45am. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off. Sing songs in the dark until 4am. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up. Make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years. Look cheerful.
4. Can you stand the mess children make? To find out, smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains. Hide a fish finger behind the stereo and leave it there all summer. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds then rub them on the clean walls. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?
5. Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems. First buy an octopus and a string bag. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this - all morning.
6. Take an egg carton. Using a pair of scissors and a pot of paint turn it into an alligator. Now take a toilet tube. Using only scotch tape and a piece of foil, turn it into a Christmas ornament. Last, take a milk container, a ping pong ball, and an empty packet of Cocoa Pops and make an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower. Congratulations. You have just qualified for a place on the playgroup committee.
7. Forget the Miata and buy a Taurus. And don't think you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that. Buy a chocolate ice cream bar and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there. Get a quarter. Stick it in the cassette player. Take a family-size packet of chocolate cookies. Mash them down the back seats. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car. There. Perfect.
8. Get ready to go out. Wait outside the toilet for half an hour. Go out the front door. Come in again. Go out. Come back in. Go out again. Walk down the front path. Walk back up it. Walk down it again. Walk very slowly down the road for 5 minutes. Stop to inspect minutely every cigarette end, piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way. Retrace your steps. Scream that you've had as much as you can stand, until the neighbors come out and stare at you. Give up and go back into the house. You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.
9. Always repeat everything you say at least five times.
10. Go to your local supermarket. Take with you the
11. Hollow out a melon. Make a small hole in the side. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side. Now get a bowl of soggy cereal and attempt to spoon it into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane. Continue until half the cereal is gone. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor. You are now ready to feed a 12-month old baby.
12. Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street, Barney and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When you find yourself singing "I Love You. You Love Me…" at work, you finally qualify as a parent.
Parenting Cost/Benefit Analysis
The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140 for a middle-income family. Talk about sticker shock! That doesn't even touch college tuition.
But $160,140 isn't so bad if you break it down. It translates into:
$8,896.66 a year, $741.38 a month, or $171.08 a week. That's a mere $24.44 a day! Just over a dollar an hour. Still, you might think the best financial advice says don't have children if you want to be "rich." It is just the opposite.
What do your get for your $160,140?
v Naming rights. First, middle, and last!
v Glimpses of God every day.
v Giggles under the covers every night.
v More love than your heart can hold.
v Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs.
v Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies.
v A hand to hold; usually covered with jam.
v A partner for blowing bubbles, flying kites, building sand castles, and skipping down the sidewalk in the pouring rain.
v Someone to laugh yourself silly with no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day.
v For $160,140, you never have to grow up.
v You get to finger-paint, carve pumpkins, play hide-and-seek, catch lightning bugs, and never stop believing in Santa Claus.
v You have an excuse to keep: reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh, watching Saturday morning cartoons, going to Disney movies, and wishing on stars.
v You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand prints set in clay for Mother's Day, and cards with backward letters for Father's Day.
v For $160,140, there is no greater bang for your buck. You get to be a hero just for retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof, taking the training wheels off the bike, removing a splinter, filling the wading pool, coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs, and coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream regardless.
v You get a front row seat to history to witness the first step, first word, first date, and first time behind the wheel.
v You get to be immortal.
v You get another branch added to your family tree, and if you're lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called grandchildren.
v You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human sexuality that no college can match.
In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there with God. You have all the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and love them without limits, so one day they will--like you--love without counting the cost.
ENJOY YOUR KIDS AND GRANDKIDS!!!!!!!
"Things I've Learned From My Children"
The following came from an anonymous mother in Austin, Texas.
1) A king size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2000 sq. foot house 4 inches deep.
2) If you spray hair spray on dust bunnies and run over them with roller blades, they can ignite.
3) A 3 year old's voice is louder than 200 adults in a crowded restaurant.
4) If you hook a dog leash over a ceiling fan, the motor is not strong enough to rotate a 42 pound boy wearing Batman underwear and a Superman cape. It is strong enough, however, if tied to a paint can, to spread paint on all four walls of a 20 by 20 foot room.
5) You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on. When using the ceiling fan as a bat, you have to throw the ball up a few times before you get a hit. A ceiling fan can hit a baseball a long way.
6) The glass in windows (even double pane) doesn't stop a baseball hit by a ceiling fan.
7) When you hear the toilet flush and the words "Uh-oh," it's already too late.
8) Brake fluid mixed with Clorox makes smoke, and lots of it.
9) A six year old can start a fire with a flint rock even though a 36 year old man says they can only do it in the movies. A magnifying glass can start a fire even on an overcast day.
10) Certain LEGOs will pass through the digestive tract of a four year old.
11) Play Dough and Microwave should never be used in the same sentence.
12) Super glue is forever.
13) No matter how much Jell-O you put in a swimming pool you still can't walk on water.
14) Pool filters do not like Jell-O.
15) VCR's do not eject PB&J sandwiches even though TV commercials show they do.
16) Garbage bags do not make good parachutes.
17) Marbles in gas tanks make lots of noise when driving.
18) You probably do not want to know what that odor is.
19) Always look in the oven before you turn it on. Plastic toys do not like ovens.
20) The fire department in Austin, TX has a 5-minute response time.
21) The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earthworms dizzy.
22) It will however, make cats dizzy. Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy.
PARENT’S DICTIONARY
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>AMNESIA: condition that enables a woman who has gone through labor to have sex again.
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>DUMBWAITER: one who asks if the kids would care to order dessert.
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>FAMILY PLANNING: the art of spacing your children the proper distance apart to keep you on the edge of financial disaster.
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>FEEDBACK: the inevitable result when the baby doesn’t appreciate the >strained carrots.
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>FULL NAME: what you call your child when you’re mad at him.
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>GRANDPARENTS: the people who think your children are wonderful even though they’re sure you’re not raising them right.
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>HEARSAY: what toddlers do when anyone mutters a dirty word.
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>IMPREGNABLE: a woman whose memory of labor is still vivid.
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>INDEPENDENT: how we want our children to be as long as they do >everything we say.
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>OW: the first word spoken by children with older siblings.
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>PRENATAL: when your life was still somewhat your own.
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>PUDDLE: a small body of water that draws other small bodies wearing dry >clean shoes into it.
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>SHOW OFF: a child who is more talented than yours.
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>STERILIZE: what you do to your first baby’s pacifier by boiling it and to your last baby’s pacifier by blowing on it.
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>TOP BUNK: where you should never put a child wearing Superman jammies.
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>TWO-MINUTE WARNING: when the baby’s face turns red and she begins to make those familiar grunting noises.
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>VERBAL: able to whine in words
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>WHODUNIT: none of the kids that live in your house
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