1. Thou shalt only serve cous cous on bath night. I can't lie. Watching my child learn to feed herself is absolutely horrifying. It's messy. It's disgusting. It will require a bath every night, which could lead to dry skin, which will require some good lotion.
1a. Thou shalt purchase a drop cloth/drip pan/tarp for meals. We own a piece of plastic specifically designed for placement under a high chair. It is bigger in diameter than one of the tires on my dad's backhoe. It's not big enough.
2. Thou shalt welcome small insects into your home. Toddlers eat everywhere. My kid is a grazer. She will have some breakfast in the high chair, but then she likes to go mobile with her second breakfast. Clearly she isn't Emily Post when it comes to table manners, so we've got crumbs. And we have ants. Lots. Of. Ants. I hate ants.
2a. Thou shalt always have a friend who studies the "hoo-doo voodoo." My best friend Stacy likes the essential oils. She's convinced me I need them. I've bought them. Lots of them. Then I just wait on her to tell me what to do with them. (Lots of ants were murdered before the creation of this blog.)
3. Thou shalt never, ever attempt moving with a toddler. We bought a new house. It's an old-new house, so we've got to make some updates before we move in. We (meaning I) are attempting to pack up the current home. Below are photos of our living room right now and the way I manage to pack during the day, respectively.
4. The mama shalt always, always put on the bedtime diaper. We buy the hippie-dippie-doo diapers because they are supposed to hold the contents more...securely? Honestly, they work, but only if they are put on properly. This means placing it significantly above the bellybutton. My husband cannot do this. He knows it. He will bathe the child, lotion her up and then call me for diaper placement. This avoids pee leakage, or worse.
5. Thou shalt not be "Judgey McJudgerson." I've judged you. If you are a mother now or even if you were a mother before I was, I've judged you and I am sorry. We are mothers. Regardless of how we birthed, adopted or came to have our children, we are mothers. Instead of judging one another, lets lift one another up. (And if you need to pay me back for the judging...my kid ate her breakfast off the floor this morning)
5a. Thou shalt DVR every episode of "DocDaniel's & McMickey's Neighborhood Lion Pirate Guard Clubhouse" episode that you can. I told you that I judged you. I was that parent who was never going to turn on the tv for her toddler. Fourteen months later, I am also that parent who needs to take a dang shower. So, record on mamas, record on.
6. Upon learning you will be parenting the fairer sex, thou shalt choose an appropriate name for her lady parts. This is actually a conversation we had before Emma was born. I thought we had decided to call "it" her "TT" unless we were talking to the doctor. We decided that, until she's older, we didn't want to use anatomically correct words. My husband did great with this for the first month. He now refers to "it" as her "hooter." Bless.
6a. Thou shalt cut one another a little slack every now and then. Raising a kid is hard. It's fun, it's serious, but it is freaking hard. Go at it as a team and you'll be more likely to stay sane. Laugh when you can, even when it is totally inappropriate. Remember to purposely make each other laugh. (Like when your husband is traveling and gets to finish a little early and sends you videos of a cute little mountain town he's in...)
**People always tell you that time flies when your children are small. I don't think you can believe it until you've lived it. It does pass by so very quickly. My encouragement to you is to embrace the chaos. I have never been a neat freak, a health nut, or a perfect spouse. Toddlerhood is definitely not a time to start becoming any of those things. It's a time to learn who you are as a parent, to learn how much mess you can tolerate, and to soak up every messy memory you can.
This is wonderful!
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