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Show me a sippy cup that doesn’t leak, and I’ll show you a unicorn.

 

Being in my earlymidish-thirties, I seem to know an awful lot of people who are either having babies, or are debating if they should jump on the baby band wagon. Having been in their position not that long ago, I am obviously now a certified expert, and can offer you this curated list of 10 wicked awesome reasons to have a baby.

1. You have a mole you’d like removed, but you don’t want to go to a dermatologist. Forget singing a lullaby to put Baby 1.0 to sleep, nothing relaxes her more than picking at what remains of a mole I had on the inside of my right elbow until recently. There is no keeping her from this war wound, for she will wiggle, burrow and slither her arm up through any sleeve until her fingers rest on the patch of skin where Mr. Mole used to be. Here’s to hoping she got clean margins.

2. You want to live in a house with exotic animals without obtaining all of those pesky permits. Toddlers are basically a majestic mix of a tiger and a chimpanzee. A chimpiger, or a tigazee. She’s fast, fearless, ferocious and meows all the time. It’s tres exotic. Best of all, eventually they grow up and can do chores, which is better than growing up and eating your neighbor’s face off.

3. You are tired of going to the bathroom alone. If you thought peeing alone was fun, you will LOVE not peeing alone. And if having someone who is eye level with the toilet seat stand there and stare at you while you make your deposits isn’t enough, racing that person to get up, turn around, and shut the toilet seat before they dive into the dirty bowl will certainly add extra excitement to what was once a mundane task.

4. You love playing “Is That A Booger Or A Piece Of Banana?” every day. This game is second only to my other favorite game, “Is That A Raisin Or A Cat Turd?” I can’t wait to play tomorrow!! (Spoiler alert, it’s never a raisin.)

5. You enjoy reading the same thing, or listening to the same song 3,466 times in one week. I know 80% of Baby 1.0’s library by heart, which is good news if there is a Zombie Apocalypse and the world loses all of its children’s books. I will be like the Giver.

6. You want your home decor to go from “modern chic” to “I didn’t know you were moving and/or why didn’t I feel that earthquake that must have just happened to explain this horrid mess?” Sure, the idea of living in somewhere that looks like an Ikea catalog is fun. It’s so clean, and organized. I get it. But really isn’t it more fun to live somewhere where traversing the floor between the kitchen and the living room provides as much danger and excitement as climbing Everest? There are legos, and spatulas and Cheerios OH MY! There are books and magnetic letters and what the hell? How did my underwear get out here!?

7. You need to locate small, dangerous items once lost in your house. Million dollar idea: you could rent babies out to find things people have lost and absolutely make a killing – both literally and figuratively. Babies can find anything on the floor, especially when it’s dangerous. Case and point? Baby 1.0 found a crack pipe at the park near our house this summer. A crack pipe. Put up a FOUND sign, but alas, there were no takers.

8. You have a desire to transform every glass of water into a smoothie. Do you like smoothies? Then babies are for you! They are like perfect little blenders, always at the ready to deposit whatever they last ate into your water-glass. Unlike those trendy NutriBullets, this blender requires maximum maintenance, and can choke and die if you give it something it can’t handle. But still. It’s a baby blender!

9. You want to find a good excuse to take the BuzzFeed quiz on “How Much Do You Know About Cats?” I will say, breastfeeding Baby 1.0 has given me A LOT of time to do things I would have never done before. I watched the whole Breaking Bad series over the course of 3 very long and very intense days. And just now, I took the BuzzFeed “How Much Do You Know About Cats?” quiz, and got an 18/20. To quote BuzzFeed, I am a feline genius. Boom.

10. You enjoy swinging from the treetops of the emotional rain forest like an out of control monkey being chased by a Harpy Eagle. Every day, I feel every degree of every emotion available. Every day at some point I find myself being exuberantly happy, and filled to the brim with pride, love and amazement. Every day at some point I find myself being extremely exhausted, totally burned out, and questioning every decision I ever made. Every day at some point I find myself treading water in the emotional in-between. It is crazy, and it is hard, but it is wonderful and beautiful at the same time.

If you answered yes to all of these questions, then obviously having a baby is for you! I hope I cleared that up for ya.

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Images: Harpy Eagle, Tiger Bunny, others are my own.

Oh, parenting. I, for one, was an incredible parent before actually becoming one. I remember scoffing at people who treated nap time like the second coming of Jesus, thinking stupidly and arrogantly, “my kid will just adapt to my schedule, or learn to sleep on the go. Obviously.” HA! HAHA! In hindsight this couldn’t be funnier, as we now have a kid who has such fussy sleep patterns, I would actually prevent the second coming of Jesus if I thought it was going to wake her up. Before becoming a parent, I was a fountain of ignorant things. Here are just a few:

1. I will never say “No.” No is bad! No is negative! Just saying “no” isn’t as effective at teaching them why they can’t do it! Turns out, no is impossible not to say. It flies out of my mouth before I even know what I’m saying, often in rapid fire succession, as I turn to catch her perched precariously on a shelf, clutching a chopstick she’s dug out of a drawer somewhere, that she is now using to point to her eye with. No is not my favorite, but no happens.

2. We will never use the iPad to distract our kid. I used to roll my eyes and think letting a kid play with a phone or iPad during travel or while enduring a long wait somewhere was lazy. Then I had a kid who won’t tolerate a car ride longer than 30 minutes without screaming to the point of hyperventilating. I get it, now. I get it.

3. We will not let her keep us in. Forget her keeping us in. I have a rule in the house, which is if I’m not wearing a bra by noon, I’m not going to put one on. I am so tired. It’s so much work to go out. I love in. In is in, and she’s just a convenient excuse.

4. She will eat what we eat, when we eat, at the table. Another pipe dream. We don’t have a table. We eat things other than macaroni. We don’t want to eat dinner at 5 every day. Some day this will be true, but for now, I’m just happy if she eats.

5. We will not let our kid watch TV. Oooh, we were so cute in our naivety. TV is poor people’s childcare. There, I said it. Sometimes you need 30 minutes to do something without someone dangling off your back pockets screaming at you. Do I let her watch re-runs of The Maury Povich Show? No. But I have a hard time believing that an episode of Sesame Street now and again is going to cause irreparable mental harm.

6. I will not have a kid who always has crap all over her face. Kids, it turns out, are kind of gross. They produce liquids out of any and all orifices at an astounding rate, and on a rare dry day, they will still certainly have ample opportunity to dribble, smear or paint their faces with any number of liquefied food products. Couple this with Baby 1.0’s reaction to me trying to wipe her face (picture someone trying to fight off a swarm of bees, while simultaneously attempting to do the hula), and she almost always has at least one crusty patch of something somewhere above her neck.

7. I will always find time to shower, dress, and brush my teeth in the morning. There are days where this happens early, there are days when this happens late, and there are days where this doesn’t happen at all. You don’t have to tell me I’m gross. I know it.

8. I won’t dress my girl in all pink. This one is extra stupid. I would dress her in all puce if that was the color people gave us. She looks cute in pink, she would look cute in puce. In my mind, the color I put her in will in no way, shape, or form, dictate anything about her personality in the end.

9. I won’t get all weird and attached to her toys and clothes. This one I need to work on. Her itty bitty baby clothes, that used to cover her itty bitty baby body, will never leave my possession. And neither will anything that I have a memory of her playing with, because obviously, part of her soul is now attached to these items. So back off, Judgy McJudgerson, and leave me here to sit in the closet huffing onesies in an attempt to smell her newborn smell just one more time.

10. I will not let Baby 1.0 use my jeans as a napkin. Who am I kidding? Considering the alternative of wearing a body suit made out of paper towels has yet to be invented, I will let Baby 1.0 use my jeans as a napkin, and I won’t think twice about it until I go out into public with 1/4 cup of dried yogurt smeared on my inner thigh. Then I will wish, yet again, that someone would invent a body suit made out of paper towels.

There are more things I said I wouldn’t do that I now do daily. So many more. Oodles and boodles. A truly shameful amount. But enough about me, I want to hear about you! What did you say you’d never do that you now do all the time?