Dear Abby: How Will I Know?

It's Week Two of the Dear Abby extravaganza!   Why don't you take a few minutes to kick your feet up and give this a little read before you hop in the car to sit in traffic for six hours?  I'm pretty sure hamburgers taste as good at your destination as they do in your own backyard, so there's no need to rush into National Bar-B-Que Weekend.  And posts like this only come along once in a blue...um, week.

Last week, we explored mom-on-mom cannibalism in all its over-hyped, under-rationalized glory.  This week, we're going to put the proverbial horse before the proverbial cart and muse on another reader's question:

How do I (and my wife) know when we're ready to have kids?

Even if you know, at some basic level, that you want to have kids someday, the question of when someday becomes today is a big one.  In fact, I think it is The Big Question of most people's lives.  I'm not the first to point out that having a child is the one decision you cannot un-make.  You can transfer schools, leave a job, divorce a spouse, sell a house, and send your entree back.  But once that baby comes into the world, you will be forever defined as a parent.  You may be a good parent or a bad parent or a helicopter parent or an absent parent.  Whatever kind of parent you are, the point is you're a parent.  Switch the adjective, absorb the noun.

I think we can all agree that, if I've achieved anything thus far in the post, I've now sent today's questioner and others like him searching for the nearest paper bag.  In the distance, I can hear someone screaming, "I know I'm supposed to be taking this shit seriously, but did you have to go and turn up the volume?!?"  Yes, in fact.  I did.  It's called an INTRODUCTION. 

In my mind's eye, I had always seen myself with children.  I hoped for two, and hoped to have them when I was relatively young.  Once I became an attorney working insane hours, though, I started to wonder when I was going to be able to fit a baby into the frenetic pace of my life...and into my small Manhattan apartment.  I distinctly remember boarding the 6 train at the 86th Street station to head south to my office one morning and being hit with a wave of nervous confusion.  Don't ask me why, but at that very early hour on a muggy summer morning, I was consumed with a single question: when am I ever going to be ready to become a mother?

I soon resolved that I was going to stop thinking about it, because it was so out of the realm of possibility for my husband and I at the time.  Both of us were working at a grueling pace, we had little to no disposable income, and we had still only been married for a short time.

A couple years later, something great happened.  Well, great for me, not so great for those hoping I can shed some light on the baby-timing dilemma.  The great-for-me thing was that all of a sudden, something in me just clicked.  I powerfully and clearly and absolutely felt the need, the urge, the pure desire to have a baby.  And guess what?  The feeling first struck when I was taking the exact same subway commute as I'd been taking when I first felt so utterly whacked out by the whole proposition.  Bizarrely poetic.  Or just bizarre.  (Or statistically not so interesting, given the amount of mornings I commuted to work on the 6 train.)

I didn't question the feeling, just like I had somehow convinced myself not to obsess over my previous confusion. 

I don't think my husband ever felt a similar impulse on the issue.  When I told him about mine, he listened with a certain tinge of fear in his eyes, but it didn't take too long for him to get on board.

Given my story, when people ask me how I knew I was ready, my response is completely unhelpful: I just knew.

Maybe that's not so unhelpful, actually.  The lesson there is that life or biology or your subconscious or whatever can be trusted to throw you a bone.  Even though it's a huge question, the answer may come from as simple a place as your gut.  I can tell you that I trusted mine, and it worked for me.

On the other hand, maybe you're keeping my first response in the "unhelpful" column.  You want more concrete analysis from someone who's been on both sides of the decision.  For you, I present some practical considerations that I think can help you determine if you're ready for some company.  Of the 7-pound, 21-inch, no hair or musculature variety. 

1.  Do you have the money?

This is a crass and perhaps unsentimental place to start, but you discarded my whole "trust your gut" approach, so I'm thinking practicality is your thing.  There's nothing more practical than coming to terms with the fact that babies are expensive.  So are the kids that babies grow up to be.  Being pregnant means an entirely new wardrobe for mom.  I'm talking top-to-bottom wardrobe here, from undergarments to shoes.  Plus all the hats for the days mom is too tired or nauseous to do her hair.  The hospital stay for birthing the baby will cost thousands of dollars.  Then all the baby gear.  The diapers, the wipes, the onesies, the spit-up cloths, the crib, the changing table, the rocking chair.  And those are just the basics.  People will tell you that you need a stroller that costs more than your rent, a bottle warmer, a wipes warmer, multiple ointments and creams, every outfit you ever see in a baby-store window, and every variation of pillow.  I can tell you that you actually need none of those things, but you won't believe me.  You should just take an honest look at your finances and answer for yourself: can I afford every variation of Sophie the Giraffe, that cover for the shopping cart, and the sheep that makes noises to put my kid in a catatonic trance?  If the answer is no, maybe you should hold off.  If the answer is that you don't believe in providing for the comforts of others, maybe you should get a fish and walk away from the baby idea for good.

2.  Do you have the space?

When a little bundle of joy first arrives, the only free space really required is a bassinet for sleeping, a flat surface for diaper changing, and your front torso for holding.  Then that bundle morphs into a more three-dimensional object and starts doing things like rolling over and crawling and teetering and tottering and walking.  Then that three-dimensional object morphs into a tornado and spends years running, hiding, and jumping.  Usually when you're trying to get them dressed.

So you're gonna need some space.  For the little person itself, and also for all that gear I mentioned above.  If you live at the L.A.'s Staples Center or one of the homes Brad & Angie are not currently using, then you can skip this step.  You're fine on space.

Otherwise, consider the following.  When we lived in Manhattan, my daughter's stroller was forced to serve both as a baby vehicle and as a piece of furniture -- it was so big relative to our tiny "foyer" that we had no choice but to hang coats on it and store snacks in it.  You're going to need to be able to dedicate sections of your counter-space and shelves of your cabinets to bottles, baby food, teething crackers, formula, and every cardboard box with a Sesame Street character on it that your local grocery store sells.  Your bathtub needs to be able to contain hundreds of plastic water toys.  And no one has more swag than your kid.  It's like the world is their personal gift shop.  You're going to need some storage space.

3.  Do you have the mindset?

While money is important and space is helpful, I think there is no bigger hurdle to be sure you can jump than "mindset."  You can lie to yourself about your earning potential and about the shabby chicness of your kid sleeping on a dog bed in your living room/dining room/kitchen, but now is the time for brutal honesty.  Don't mess with yourself on this one.  You've got to be able to handle your own truth.

I'm going to tell you some things that come with the territory of being a parent.  It's impossible for you to ask yourself now if you're ready for any of these, because no one is ever "ready" for them.  What you need to ask yourself is: "Am I dry-heaving, breaking out in hives, or doing my unattractive cry when I think about any of the following?"  If you are having these or similar bodily reactions to the upcoming list, congratulations, you're the lucky winner of an easy answer: now's not the time for you to have kids.

Being a parent means, in part and in no particular order:

• Never eating an entire meal sitting down or empty-handed.
• Having to plan for every possibility - wet diaper, dirty diaper, bored child, thirsty child, hungry child, child with a cold, child with dirty hands, child with a friend with a cold or dirty hands, car-jacking, apocalypse (the last two might be unique to me) -- every time you leave the house.
• Sleeping soundly only from 9:00PM to 9:45PM.  On Tuesdays.
• Lying a lot.  White lies, but still lies.  Because there are only so many ways to try to rationalize with a toddler about why "all the toys" can't come home with us.
• Never going to see a movie again.
• Answering questions about things you never knew could prompt a question.
• Becoming a doctor.  You're the one who has to figure out why your 3-month-old is crying hysterically, how to soothe the gums of a teething baby, whether the tick had embedded or not, if that's a temper tantrum or paranormal activity, and where on the spectrum of actual injury an invisible gash to the knee falls. 
• Getting comfortable with saying words like "boo boo," "potty," "listening ears," "cooperating time," and "don't make me say it again."
• Becoming an actor.  Because the public cannot see or guess at the embarrassment/fury you're containing as your daughter strips naked, smacks you in the face, and yells "I'M NOT READY TO LEAVE!" when you tell her church is over.
• Watching Aladdin every night for three months and realizing that if you were given one wish from a genie, it'd be for a weekend.  A real one. 
• Never sitting still.  Unless it's because it's 9:00PM on a Tuesday and you're sleeping.

I'm hoping these are helpful, but I'm guessing your Siskel & Ebert review is somewhere in the neighborhood of one middle finger, all the way up. 

I'm sorry.  There's no easy answer. 

Except the trust your gut one.

Now, are you free to babysit? 

Submit your idea or suggestion for a "Dear Abby" post by emailing me at abbysblog@rocketmail.com. All the other, intricate details of this something-for-everyone are explained here.

Dear Abby: The Mommy Wars

Today I will be kicking off my "Dear Abby" series, where I do a post on a topic that a reader has suggested to me.  I've decided that I will do these posts every Friday.  Which means fathers everywhere will soon be confused when everyone starts saying Thank God It's DAD every Friday.  You can explain to them that DAD is Dear Abby Day.  I'll be too busy blogging.

Today's topic is the magazine cover heard 'round the world.  It's this rectangular powder keg, in all its glossy glory:

I picked up Time's May 21, 2012 edition the other day.  The last time I read a Time magazine was the time I forgot to bring my book to the gym in 1999.  Upon greeting my long not-lost non-friend, I closed my right eye so I could stop looking at Jamie Lynne Grumet's boob and was immediately underwhelmed.  Either Time is really taking a bullet for the eco-conservative Green Team or they've hit the bottom of the material well, because the issue was shorter than the alphabet books my daughter makes at pre-school.

I'm guessing the slight heft of the magazine is more owing to the latter.  In fact, if I were to put on my Michael Jordan I'll-Bet-On-Anything hat, I'd wager that the editors at Time are afraid that's exactly what they're running out of: time.  I bet they're desperate for readership and trying to cut costs so that Father Time doesn't tell Time that its time is up.

After I read the mommy article, I became convinced I was right.  And I was mad I lost my Michael Jordan speed dial button because I could have just made myself some millions.

The desperation over at Time was confirmed because the content of the article only tangentially related to the explosive image and headline on the cover of the magazine.  Clearly the boob-sucking pre-schooler and the gauntlet-throwing "Mom Enough" challenge were simply a clever ploy to get all of us riled up and ready to spend $5 on 6 pieces of paper.  If they'd accurately depicted the "related" story in a pictorial, it would be a photo of a grandfather dressed in scrubs lecturing a frazzled mother while trying to hide his giggling from her.  And the caption would read "Science -- Who Needs It?"

Needless to say, I have a lot of reactions to the story, but I'm going to try to boil them down to three. 

Reaction 1:  The actual subject of the cover story, Dr. William Sears, is a jerk.

The focus of Time's reporting is not Pilates teachers with breasts just waiting to be suckled.  Instead, it's Dr. William Sears, who published the first edition of The Baby Book in 1992.  In that brick of a book (it's 767 pages long!), Dr. Sears advocates for "attachment parenting."  Boiled down, attachment parenting dictates that "the more time babies spend in their mothers' arms, the better the chances they will turn out to be well-adjusted children."  The basic tenets of such a doctrine are that:

• Mothers should not let their children fuss.  At all.  Every cry should be tended to.
• Mothers should not put their babies down.  Ever.  If mommy needs to use her hands for something other than toting Junior, Dr. Sears sells a sling that mommy can rig to her torso and deposit Junior into.
• Babies should "co-sleep" (ie. share a bed with) their parents.
• And yes, as Time walloped us over the head with, mommy should breastfeed Junior for as long as possible.  Biologically possible.  Not socially-acceptable possible.

As I will discuss more below, I have no real issue with attachment parenting in and of itself.  It is certainly not for me, but if some mothers feel like that's how this whole parenting mystery unfolds itself for them, fine.  And wow.

But I have a real issue with Dr. Sears.  He, together with his wife, cobbled together the attachment parenting movement relying on their personal histories, their Catholic faith, and their random reading choices.  Both Dr. and Mrs. Sears felt abandoned by one or both of their parents in their own childhoods.  Both are deeply religious.  And both got the idea for their life's work from a book called The Continuum Concept.

This book was written by Jean Liedloff, a college-dropout turned part-time model who decided to go dig for diamonds in Venezuela in about the 1960s.  (I'm serious.  On all counts.)  She noticed that the indigenous people in the South American jungle carried their children with them all the time, and that those children seemed to "cry less" than American babies.  Based on her uneducated observations, she wrote The Continuum Concept and told mothers everywhere they needed to be more "connected" to their children.  She went on to decide never to have children of her own.  The Searses went on to decide to make her their prophet.

They've so bought into the attachment parenting thing that Mrs. Sears actually says things like "[leaving a baby] to cry in her crib damage[s] her brain."  Dr. Sears is quick to chime in with a comment that putting a baby in a crib is putting a baby "behind bars."  The only way to save your baby from dyslexia or jail, they conclude, is for mommy to a stop everything except lactation.

The couple peddles this lifestyle despite the fact that there is no scientific support for their statements and mountains  of it to contradict them.  They hold essentially firm despite the decidedly sexist undertones of their message, which they try to soften with suggestions that fathers "do the dishes" or book mommy a massage.  Their response to doubters is simply to say that their method is the method God likes, and that their preaching is based on the practices that have worked for them.  Then they condemn any mother who would dare put her baby on a schedule or on a bottle, even though that's the method Dr. Spock likes, and those are the practices that have worked for millions.

My bottom line: if your idea of childbirth is just moving a baby from the womb to other side of your epidermis, enjoy your years as a kangaroo.  I just hope you have a reason better than Dr. Sears' say-so to do it.  To my mind, his game is an exploitative racket.

Reaction 2:  The whole "Mommy Wars" firestorm needs to be extinguished.

Time magazine is just as exploitative.  After the whole Ann Romney "don't tell me I don't 'work' just because I never 'worked' outside the home" debacle, the world has fallen down the Mommy Wars rabbit hole.  "Working" moms versus stay-at-home moms.  Attachment parenting versus helicopter parenting versus I just want my kid to be a good person and not too clingy and eat the occasional vegetable parenting.  Time magazine asking if you're mom "enough."  As if mothering is some beach the U.S. Marines are trying to storm.

Enough, already.  In the history of time, no perfect parent -- much less mother -- has ever been identified.  Probably because every parent started off as the kid their parents scarred or neglected or screwed up in some way.  Imperfect children grow up to be imperfect parents, and the whole wide world is made up of imperfect people. 

Some kids grow up to be better people than other kids grow up to be, sure.  But I think it'd be tough to argue, with a straight face, that Johnny is so much more well-adjusted than Albert because Johnny piggy-backed his mother until he outweighed her.  There's a lot that goes into making us who we are.  Of course a huge building block is how we're raised during our formative years.  I can say, though, that a lot of who I am is the result of things I had to go off and do on my own during, for example, the big bad years of kindergarten.  My mother could have never let me shed a single tear under her watchful eye, but I probably would have still suffered from confidence issues after a crush wasn't reciprocated or some other fact of life -- that my mother had no control over -- hit me upside the head.

In other words, an extra month of breast-feeding does not, to my mind, a Mother Theresa or Warren Buffett or Gisele Bundchen (I'm using her as a self-confidence standard-bearer) make.  Not in and of itself.

What WILL make a difference, way more often than not, is a semi-sane, semi-grounded mother.  And whatever it takes for mommy to find the sweet spot to her parenting is what mommy should do.  As long as, of course, it's not the sweet taste of coke on her teeth after she snorts a line or some similarly illegal and universally frowned upon parenting technique.

Mommy pitting herself against mommy is just unhelpful.  Spend your time taking care of your kids and taking care of yourself, in the way and to the degree that resonates with you.  Don't worry what the mommy next door is doing if it's just to criticize it.  Find a different way to reassure yourself that what you're doing is right for you and yours.  Cutting your fellow mommy down to size to make yourself feel righteous is very middle school of you.  That's a sure-fire way to teach an imperfect attitude and approach to life to those kids hanging from your neck.

And every media outlet or other third-party who wants to do the pitting just to generate sound bites is beyond unhelpful -- it's cheap.

Reaction 3:  This is just too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Despite all of the above, there's no way to look at that cover and not feel like it's raining softballs.  In that vein, let's end this on a light note. 

I think you can take your cues from your kid on when is the right time for you two to stop with the breast-feeding routine.  If your kid can verbalize any of the following, I'd say you're getting more than just cues that the end is 'nigh.  You're receiving spam from Mother Nature delivered via a megaphone:

• "Mom, I need to wash down the spaghetti o's.  Has your right breast recovered from this morning?"
• "Hey guys, I need to take a break from tag.  I'm parched.  Mom, put down your book and pull up your t-shirt!"
• "Move over, Sam!  You're hogging all the boobs!"
• "Today Bobby was telling me about these things called juice boxes.  What in the world are those?"
• "Mom!  I passed the test!  I got my driver's license!  Can we celebrate with both sides?!?"
• "MAAAAA!!!!  THE BREAST MILK!!!!"

Submit your idea or suggestion for a "Dear Abby" post by emailing me at abbysblog@rocketmail.com.  All the other, intricate details of this something-for-everyone are explained here. 

One Heck of A Q&A

One of the best days of the month at my house is the day I get paid.  A close second is the day my Vanity Fair magazine arrives.

I love that little bundle of glossy pages.  Their articles are always in-depth, just a bit out of left field, and highly entertaining.  It's the best money you can spend on a magazine, in my mind, because a single issue can last you a full week.  Compare that with, say, an US Weekly, which you can read cover-to-cover over a bowl of cereal.  If I'm going to allot my subscription allowance, I don't need Ben Bernanke helping me figure out that the Vanity Fair option is a sounder economic decision.

Despite the fact that I love the magazine for its meaty reporting, a highlight for me is actually the shortest piece in the magazine: the Proust Questionnaire that always occupies the last page.

This is a questionnaire that Vanity Fair puts in front of a celebrity or other luminary every month and lets them give their answer to the 20 (or so) questions in 20 (or so) words or less.  It was made famous by some French dude in the late 19th/early 20th century named Marcel Proust.  Proust didn't come up with the questions; he copped them from a girlfriend's journal and then answered them in a journal of his own.  His answers were so apparently awesome that the questions themselves became a touchstone for personality insights.  Pretty amazing to have such a stellar answer that the prompting question itself becomes renowned for generations.  I bet Willie Shakespeare is exhausted from all the somersaults he's turned by now in frustration for not giving Hamlet an answer to the "to be or not to be" riddle.

Anyway, after Proust copped the questions, it's been an extensive string of copping ever since.  A French television host copped them for his guests.  Then James Lipton of Inside the Actor's Studio copped them for his celebrity-worship sessions.  And yes, now we're coming full circle -- Vanity Fair copped them for a print version of "getting to know you."

Every time I read the questionnaire, I find that I do discover something about the person answering.  Mary Tyler Moore is still spunky.  British people make a lot of literary references.  Almost everyone tries too hard to be (a) deep or (b) light-hearted in a way they want us to understand is deep.  People really love their dogs.

Another thing that happens every time I read the questionnaire is that I think about what my own answers would be, and I daydream about the day when James Lipton or Vanity Fair would care to ask me for them.

That day will never come.  But as the Mother Superior told Maria when she left the abbey to go nanny for Captain von Trapp, "when the Lord closes one door, somewhere he opens a window."

Yes, that's right.  This blog is my window from the Lord.  Thanks, Big Guy.

So here we go.  I'm going to take the Proust Questionnaire.  I invite you to do the same with your loved ones.  Or just say your answers to yourself in front of the mirror.  Or tell them to your dog.  He'll probably appreciate how much you refer to him in your answers.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Being with my family with no schedule or deadline or end in sight, and with children who are perfectly and quietly entertained throughout.

What is your greatest fear?
Delay.  As in traffic, a long line, or an inbound flight that has yet to land and is throwing my outbound flight completely off schedule.

Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Helen Keller.  Because I, too, will do whatever it takes to read.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Defeatism. 

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Hypocrisy.

What is your favorite journey?
The one from the delivery room to the recovery room, in a wheelchair, with your arms full of a swaddled little person (who's yours.  This isn't a baby-snatching fantasy.)

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
The appearance of it.

Which living person do you most despise?
Politicians.  I know that's a class of people, so just pick one and that's my answer.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
"Apparently."  And whatever the phrase is that makes up the sound of a fake laugh.

What is your greatest regret?
My senior prom.  Long story short, kicked off a slow and steady personal decline.  I blame the at-home updo.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
My family.

When and where were you happiest?
Pre-marriage and kids, that would be summer camp.  Camp Wohelo.  You should go.

Which talent would you most like to have?
The ability to inspire goose-bumps with my singing.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
My inability to just let go.

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
The fact that my sisters don't live a stone's throw away.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
My two children.  And seizing on the opportunity to move back to Maine.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
A stop-light or a stop-watch.  Definitely something with "stop" in it.  Hopefully not a door-stop.

What is your favorite occupation?
Reader.

What is your most marked characteristic?
Sarcasm.

Who are your favorite writers?
The good ones.

Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Jo March from Little Women or Francie Nolan from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

Who are your heroes in real life?
Katharine Hepburn and my grandfathers.

What is it that you most dislike?
Waiting.  Idiots.  Egg white omelettes.

How would you like to die?
Peacefully.  And after everybody else.

What is your motto?
Better luck next time.

To Don't List

We all know we shouldn't brag.  It comes across as rude, inconsiderate, and/or annoying.  While people might want to learn about your weight loss or your direct line to God or the boatloads of cash you've figured out how to make, they usually don't want to hear about it directly from you.  And unless you're on the cover of People magazine, a rapper, or a Wall Street executive, you remember that.  And you zip your lip.

Until, that is, you have a baby.

It's a phenomenon I've spent a lot of time studying.  New parents -- particularly new mothers -- welcome Junior into the world and say a simultaneous good-bye to all sense of propriety and decorum.  And I'm not talking about breast-feeding at the DMV.  I'm talking about how you can't have a conversation with them anymore because every time you ask for their thoughts on, say, the Keystone oil pipeline or how JLo's clothes continuously manage to trick gravity, they respond with a story whose moral is two-dimensional: (1) they are the best mother ever; and (2) their child was FedExed overnight from Heaven.  The person suffering from sleep deprivation quickly becomes you, because the constant stories about Junior lull you into a fatigue typically associated with a coma or an extended Easter homily. 

How it is these mothers don't recognize the multiple Emily Post laws they're breaking and the numbers of people they're sending into the loving arms of a zoloft prescription had me stumped for a long time.  I chanted with Buddhist monks, I tweeted with Ashton Kutcher, and I conferred with the authority on all things parenting, Angelina Jolie, all in a bid for clarity on the issue.  Finally, after a night of partying with Dina Lohan, it hit me. 

These poor women don't know that what they're doing is bragging.  They're so whacked out on hormones and have huffed so much Desitin that their neurons are no longer firing on all cylinders.

If I started this blog for any purpose, it was to provide a public service.  And if there's any public service I would most happily provide, it is helping moms to remain the interesting, well-rounded, sometimes self-effacing gals we all kind of liked pre-zygote. 

And thus I birthed the following To Don't List*

*  This list should be followed in public circumstances only.  By public, I mean anyone outside of you and your spouse/partner/sperm donor/surrogate/anyone else who may have contributed to the conception and delivery of your child(ren).  In the private circle of you and X, I wholeheartedly encourage you to marvel at the genius and wonder that is the specimen you have contributed to the world.  He/she is really awesome and you should love him/her above all others.  Just don't talk about it/do it in front of anyone else. 

A.  Don't talk about how your kid is such a wonderful sleeper.  If your poor listener has kids, they may not be good sleepers.  They may not sleep at all.  Hearing about how your little Junior has slept great since you wheeled him home from the hospital on a golden sleigh might meet the legal definition for justifiable homicide.  Even more hilariously, your poor listener's kids might beat the pants off Junior when it comes to their number of hours on snooze control, and then you look like even more of an idiot.  But if your poor listener does not have kids, they are just left to wonder why you won't shut up about something your poor listener does -- indeed, looks forward to -- for as long as he/she possibly can on a nightly basis.

B.  Don't talk about how your kid is such a great eater.  That just prompts your poor listener to think about Junior at your boob.  That's awkward for everyone.  Moreover, your poor listener might be on a diet and think that you are subliminally telling them the diet is a bust because they, too, are clearly still a great eater.  Finally, if your poor listener does not have kids, they are just left to wonder why you won't shut up about something your poor listener does -- indeed, looks forward to -- for as long as he/she possibly can on a daily basis.

C.  Don't talk about how your kid's bowel movements are so regular.  That's disgusting.  Only your kid's pediatrician needs to know that.

D.  Don't talk about how your kid is THIS CLOSE to crawling.  They're not.  They're just trying to worm themselves away from you because you're embarrassing even THEM with all the bowel movement stories.

E.  Don't talk about how your kid is so happy.  Again, they're not. They're crying inside.  It's hit them that they're stuck with you for life.  The smiles are a coping mechanism and an attempt to make themselves cute to potential adoptive parents. 

F.  Don't ascribe preferences or strong suits to them.  Babies can't recognize colors.  Their world is literally black and white.  So don't try to tell people that they're "Mama's little heartbreaker" or "so psyched to watched the playoffs with Daddy!" or "big zac Efron fans."  Your attempt to disguise your own need for love, companionship, or a date to The Lucky One is fooling all of no one.

G.  Don't ever say your baby is "just the best baby."  Every parent thinks that about their baby.  And regardless of who your poor listener is, in response to hyperbole such as this, that poor listener is now forced to make a mental Rolodex of all the ways your baby sucks.  So you're essentially prompting the exact opposite conclusion than the one you were trying to line-drive home.

I'm sure I'll refine this list over time, and expand it to encompass the toddler/pre-school years just as soon as I gain more perspective on them myself.  But if the above 7 rules are too much for your exclamation-addled brain to compute, let's boil it down to these two take-aways.

• People have been having babies since the dawn of time.  That's how we all got here.  And there's a lot of us.  Look around you.  There's a baby.  There's a guy who used to be a baby.  Ad infinitum.  So by having a baby, you have actually not done anything really unique.  In fact, you'd join a more unique set if you could accurately identify, in order, the U.S. presidents.
• There's an easy rule of thumb to all this.  My lucky followers on Twitter (it's a complicated application process) already know this.  Until your baby can do something a domesticated pet cannot, it is not news.

With that said, could you please, for God's sake, now tell me what you think about the Keystone oil pipeline?!?

Just Do It

I owe the genius over at Nike who launched the Just Do It campaign a big thank-you.  In fact, so do my husband and children, though they might not know it (and, in one case, though he cannot say it).  Those three little words are what propel me through most of every day.  If I didn't heed their command more often than not, I would weigh 300 pounds, my daughter's lunch box would contain nothing more than a Nutri-Grain bar, and there'd be a stacks of dirty dishes and piles of dirty laundry blotting my house like domestic acne.

A lot of what I do on a day-to-day basis is not what you would call, you know, fun.  I spend a decent chunk of every day staring into the gaping hole of a dishwasher -- because I'm unloading it one instant and loading it right back up the next.  I have a similarly intimate relationship with the washer and dryer.  If I go through a day without an open-fill-empty of those Sisters from Sears, well, it's a day worthy of fireworks.  I change lots of diapers.  I clean lots of spit-up.  I do a lot of assists on and off the potty.  I fill sippy-cups with juice.  I fill sippy-cups with juice.  I fill sippy-cups with juice. 

Oh, I fill sippy-cups with juice.

If I want to make it to the gym, I need to get there before the sun even thinks about shining.  That means my day starts, at the earliest, around 4:45AM.  At the latest, it starts around 6:15, when my son wakes up.  My day ends, at the earliest, around 8:30 when both children are in bed, the kitchen is clean, and lunches are ready for the next day.  At the latest, it ends around 10, after my husband and I have tried to spend some time together with our eyes open.  In between, it's a semi-controlled, somewhat-orchestrated chaos of school, day-care, work, errands, chores, meal prep, activities, and enforcing time-outs.

Now hang on a second.  I'm not putting this out there because I think someone should feel sorry for me.  None of the above is abnormal.  None of the above qualifies in anyone's book as "problems."  None of the above was unsolicited -- I signed up for every aspect of my life that now defines the countour of my days.

But there's no denying that it's busy.  Which means I get tired.  And there's no denying the not-fun aspects of much of it.  Which means I usually sometimes would prefer to be doing something else.  Unfortunately, though, my son isn't going to learn how to change his own diaper.  And my daughter, sadly, isn't going to learn to fill her own godforsaken sippy cup.  So I just. have. to. do. it.

Alarm goes off.  It's dark.  Get up and go to the gym?  Just do it.

Kids need to be bathed.  Both will put up a fight.  Just do it.

Groceries need to be bought.  Awful, horrible errand.  Just do it.

It's such a wonderful little mantra.  It immediately cuts short the debate you could otherwise let yourself have which would inevitably end in you NOT doing what you otherwise should to save you pain or stress or angst just a stone's throw down the road.  Don't engage with the Just Delay Its.  You will pay.  Embrace the mantra.  Just Do It.