Parenting Rules

If I wrote a book of parenting rules, I would include these two chapters.

1.  Your kids do not care if you are sick.

That’s right.  Have a headache?  A sore throat?  Do NOT look to your 11 month old for sympathy or even consideration.  His butt still needs changed.  He needs a bath.  And for God’s sake, he does NOT want to eat whatever it is you put in front of him tonight.  He will have crackers and string cheese with a formula chaser, thank you very much.

He doesn’t care if you lay on the couch or the floor as long as you are there.

There is beauty in that.

I realized last week that Adam doesn’t necessarily love me for my actions, but for my presence (at this point anyway).  I played with him, but was definitely less than 100 percent in my enthusiasm for it and he did not care one bit.  He smiled, laughed and crashed into me.

He was happy just to be with me.  And although I wanted to be in bed, there was happiness for me as well.

2.  Everything is trial and error.

Feed him the same food for 7 months?  Great.  Dress him in cute footie pajamas every single night of his young life.  Fabulous.

Today?  It’s all different.

Foods that he ate constantly are now refused, unless of course it is fruit.   Out of clean pajamas on Monday night, I dressed him in a long sleeve tshirt and pajama bottoms and for the first time in a month he didn’t wake me up three times in the night.  The alarm rang on Tuesday morning and I didn’t realize what the noise was.  What time was it? Did ADAM SLEEP ALL NIGHT?

Trial and error.  Error, error, error, better trial something new.

Could different pajamas be the key to nighttime sleep?  Could it work two nights in a row?

Yes. It did.

And that is the end of my short story otherwise known as “My Vast Experience as a New Parent.”

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