10. Everyone has an opinion. Your baby isn't dressed warmly enough. Your baby is too bundled up. Your baby should be __________________ by now. (You can fill in the blank with just about anything...sleeping through the night, potty trained, walking, admitted to an Ivy league school...) One thing that I figured out (way later than I should have) was that the only opinion that mattered was my own. Being a parent is hard and even harder if you are trying to please everyone else. So do what works for you, it's probably the right thing.9. When you go to a restaurant with your baby and they bring you a high chair, turn it upside down to hold the car seat. This works much better than trying to balance the car seat on the top. No one told me this. I would like to take the time to publicly apologize to my children for the meals they spent hanging precariously over the table.
8. Keep extra clothes in the car at all times. For yourself. Take it from me. You never know when you will be puked on at a wedding that is a 90 minute drive from your house. Also extra diapers are important too because having your kid ride home completely naked is very very risky.
7. Answer all "when can I _____________?" questions with "When you are 5." We have been doing this since they first started talking and it has taken care of a lot of things for us. With their fifth birthday less than a year away we are prepping for a variety of new activities that they have been waiting a lifetime for like chewing gum, riding bikes, going to school and getting a puppy. And I am starting to think we should have said, "When you are 13."
6. Most pre schools begin registration in January. Nine months early. It is ridiculous. But if you don't know about it and you miss the first day, everything fills up and you get put on the waiting list. Or even worse than the waiting list, the PM class which is during your child's sacred nap. The lesson here is plan ahead. Waaaaaaaay ahead.
5. Three words. Books. On. Tape. After way too many long car rides with bored, fussy kids, I discovered that you can check out books on tape (cd really) from the library. I just load up the cd player before we leave and enjoy the silence in the back seat as I listen to find out what Brown Bear sees. So far, this has been an effective form of travel entertainment but I always have plan B: Benedryl.
4. If you are going to be out past bedtime, pack jammies. That way you can just put them right to bed when you get home. I promise you, this saves a lot of hassle.
3. Teach your kids how to tell time. Kind of. When our kids were almost two, we taught them what a 7 looked like. We drew a big one and pasted it on the wall above their clock. We covered the minutes on the clock so that they could only see the hour and taught them that they could call for us to get them up when the number on the clock matched the number on the wall. Oh yeah. We also set the clock back a half hour so now we don't have to ever get up before 7:30. This is a trick I learned from the people I used to nanny for and I will be forever thankful that I get to "sleep in".
2. You already know that I vacuum my kids' rooms while they are sleeping and that might be a bit over kill, but don't be afraid to make noise while they are sleeping. Make phone calls, watch t.v., talk in a normal voice. Be loud while they are learning to sleep because it sure beats tip toeing around for the next 18 years.
1. Parenting is hard work and you will make mistakes but most of them won't matter. Raise your kids they way you want to. If someone does something that you think might work for you, try it!! If someone tells you to do something that you don't want to do, forget about it!! Have fun with your kids because the time will go faster than you can ever imagine.
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