Archive | February, 2015

A Comprehensive Dictionary of Parenting for Beginners

3 Feb
  • Diaper: A piece of absorbent cloth Mummy wears between her legs because between feeds and singing and communing with the washing basket, a toilet is a once-familiar entity in a faraway universe.
  • Sleep: Word not found.
  • Blowout: Since we’re in polite company, let’s just say it’s not the fancy things a dryer does to your hair.
  • Midnight feast: Sod Blyton, sod Mallory Towers, it’s a full blown party of one to which a certain someone’s parents are very reluctant invitees.
  • Rocking: Formerly used as a descriptor for parties and weekends, this calorie-burning tool is the perfect substitute for pumping weights.
  • Shhhh: What you find yourself saying to the person responsible for 50% of Creature, because:
    1) That’s the sound you emit most these days
    2) Advanced language is highly overrated
    3) I just may be incapable of sophisticated communication at this point
  • Fun: Non-REM cycles of shut-eye.
  • Schedule: That hilarious entity that people who haven’t birthed a person ask you to share. Also known as “When’s a good time to chat?” Erm, 12 years sound good to you?
  • Jelly: Formerly an edible substance, now an apt descriptor for your mid section. Also, how your innards feel when a newborn smile is bestowed.
  • Sleep: Word not found.
  • Door–banger: A special kind of Beelzebub spawned for the sole purpose of waking your finally-asleep child.
  • Anti–climax: Fitting into your pre-pregnancy jeans a few weeks after delivery, only to have them puked on three minutes later.
  • Social life: Be grateful you have the latter word. ‘Nuff said.
  • Auto pilot: Discovering yourself swaying side to side long after the baby was put down.
  • Freedom: One whole hour of your body being your own. 60 entire minutes. That’s 3600 seconds of alone time. What Marquez meant when he wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude.
  • Sleep: Word not found. Stop making up lingo.
  • Parenting: An extreme sport designed to challenge every ligament in your body and synapse in your brain. Not for the faint of heart, this lethal activity will put you through the shredder and your entrails will emerge smiling.
  • Spouse: Trusted general of your tag team. Your partner in tasks of increasing difficulty. The one who has your back and frequently rubs it too. Future old age home roommate if you mess up this gig.
  • Luxury: A hot shower. Water! Soap! And preferably no one else in the bathroom.
  • Love: An abysmally inadequate word to describe the tidal wave of tenderness, fierceness, punch-me-breathless-with-mineness, indescribable biologically engineered response that comes with the territory. Universally unique. Uniquely universal. Blabber blabber. Gufhndslsladpoo.
  • Romance: Having a free hand to hold your hubby’s.
  • Spatial intelligence: The higher ability to know your boob from your face. I’ll get there. Someday.
  • Pain: You think you know all about that from going through labor. And then you watch your child being punctured by needles.
  • Blessing: Lying in bed at night, parked between a snorer and a tooter, congratulating yourself on landing two gorgeous men.
  • Insanity: Loving every bit of this existence and not wanting it to change a jot. (Wait…could the poop be less ummm…poopy?)
  • Sleep: Persistent little gnat, aren’t you? Come back in 20 years, I’ll have an answer for you.

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