Parenthood: The Many Ironies of Raising Children

Parenthood is full of irony. Take, for example, the classic case of, “I cannot wait until my baby can walk and talk and entertain herself so I can have a little peace.” It happens and then guess what? You suddenly want another baby. Like I said; parenthood is full of irony. I’m a mom. My husband and I have two little girls; our oldest is turning five next month. In the past five years, I’ve learned firsthand exactly how ironic parenthood really is.

Sleep Patterns

No matter what happens in life, your baby’s sleep pattern will never work out in your favor. Our kids go to bed at 8 pm every night and while they don’t fuss or cry or fight us, they’re up like clockwork by 5:30 am every single morning. Except, of course, on the mornings we have an early checkup at the pediatrician or we have an early flight to catch and we have to wake up at 5:30 to get ready and they decide to sleep until we have to shake them awake two minutes before we have to walk out the door at 8. Never fails.

Peace and Quiet

They’ve been squealing in delight, anger, annoyance, or whatever all morning and they finally decided to settle down and watch the educational program you turned on for them. Before you know it, you’ve managed to get dinners started, the laundry finished, and the master bathroom cleaned. What little angels; sitting so quietly and letting you get something accomplished. Just kidding. They’re not sitting quietly. Kids are never quiet. They’re coloring on the wall or munching on cat food or using the litter box as a sandbox. Or something fell in the garage and stopped the door from closing all the way and your little ones have let themselves out and picked all the flowers from your garden. From the stem.

Baby Number Two

Now you know everything. You did it once before and you are prepared. Except that you didn’t have to fight juice boxes with super-spill straws and yogurt and markers away from baby number one because you didn’t have those things yet. Baby number two manages to find those things everywhere. There’s nothing quite as fantastic as parenthood.