I’m talking about the serious stuff here. Besides the obvious ones like feeding and bathing and changing. These are the elementary stuff that are already covered to death by yet another definitive parenting guide, on top of the thousands just like it.
Here are some of the real mothering lessons that books will not teach you and you will discover them suddenly when you are right smack in the middle of it. I keep adding new lessons to my repertoire because just when I think that I’ve learnt them all, it’s like they can come up with new ones just so I can keep learning. Here we call it lifelong learning.
1. Eating codfish makes your poop, pee and puke smell like rotting fish. Salmon is ok. But every time Tru eats codfish, it’s like I’m puckering up to a bucket of dead fish.
2. Freshly folded laundry is an open invitation to be messed up. I turn my back for 2 seconds and it’s all over the floor again faster than you can say “can’t touch this“.
3. They are never hungry at mealtimes and starving at all other times, especially when there’s ice-cream and cookies involved.
4. If you want to something destroyed or lost, tell your kid NOT to play with it.
5. You can go 3 days without doing the number 2 before it starts to count as constipation.
6. When you have a diaper emergency, a maxi pad, kleenex and tape will do the job.
7. It takes exactly 1 minute and 18 seconds to eat a plate of noodles standing over the kitchen counter while your kid shouts “eat, eat, eat, eat, eat”
8. When you have no time for a proper meal, chocolate, chips and coke/coffee will give you all the energy you need. Sugar, carbs and caffeine – all the ingredients for a mother’s balanced diet.
9. If you are out and *really* need to warm up a bottle of milk, stuff it into your bra. That’s where it came from in the first place. Unless you got cold boobs then I suggest trying the armpits.
10. If you are out and *really* need to chill a bottle of freshly expressed milk, just use the a/c.
3 Comments
3. They are never hungry at mealtimes and starving at all other times, especially when there’s ice-cream and cookies involved.
You speak my mind.
4. If you want to something destroyed or lost, tell your kid NOT to play with it.
Too bad it doesn’t quite work conversely – as in, if you tell them to play with it, i think they would still go ahead. Sigh.
SERIOUSLY…. warming up a bottle of milk in your bra. Now that is certainly not in any parenting book. You are genius.