There are a few things I’ve learned in the last year and a half, I thought it may be useful to pass along.
1. Your tolerance for disgusting is raised 300% a week. Your kid doesn’t like food? Spits it out, half chewed wherever it will land. Blowout diapers are an entire different world, let alone when your little one decides lying still isn’t fun while you are trying to change a diaper full of a third of your kid’s body weight.
2. You learn to communicate in a new language. I remember my sister having entire conversations with my nieces and I couldn’t pick out one word. Now I can identify 23 different stuffed animals off key words, including a growl (tiger), an arm raise (elephant) and an action – hop, hop, hop means rabbit. My wife is even better. It’s like watching Jane Goodall with silverback gorillas.
3. You can say all the hard ass parenting stuff you want, once you have a kid, it changes. “I’m not letting my child watch ANY TV.” Three months later, you’re curled up on the floor begging PBS for a new Sesame Street to DVR. “Please don’t make me watch Pogo Games again…anything but Pogo Games.”
4. That previous one leads to this one: CHILDREN CAN DO THE SAME STUFF OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER….FOR ETERNITY. It really is amazing. My kid can work the Sesame Street phone app. She’ll click on one, watch ten seconds, then exit out and click it again. As an adult, you’re thinking – “I need some closure here. What in the hell? I must know how Oscar is going to react to this song!”
Of course, there’s the obvious, like the fact they can fill you full of joy and purpose. Then again, some of that may be delirium from lack of sleep. I saw an article pop up on my feed about people dying from sleep deprivation. I would have thought this to be BS before, but now I believe.