25 Things Every Parent Needs to Know Before Having a Baby

1. Baby hands are so small and gentle and clumsy and cute and armed with razorblades for fingernails. So approach with caution.
2. The meaning of an all-nighter is very different for new parents, but the hangover still feels the same.
3. Getting a baby to drink their medicine is like getting someone with arachnophobia to drink a spider, except harder.
4. When your baby learns to talk, you will realize all of those philosophical things you thought your baby was saying were just demands for more food.
5. Changing a diaper that doesn't need to be changed is an example of parenting being as good as it gets and as bad as it gets.
6. Never wear corduroy pants and try to put a baby to bed. You might as well be carrying a boombox playing Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.
7. Wherever you are, wherever you go, remember, your baby is plotting to grab the sunglasses off your face to make it clear there is never a time when parents are cooler than their kids.
8. People will tell you their dog won’t bite, but that’s only because they haven’t seen how hard a baby can pull a tail.
9. If you've ever said something easy is like taking candy from a baby, you've never tried to take candy from a baby. A baby will cut you.
10. When restaurants give babies crayons, it’s not for entertainment. It’s to give them something to throw instead of the silverware. So be vigilant in restaurants that don’t have crayons.
11. If your schedule starts to fill up with very important meetings, your baby is about to get sick.
12. Strangers will know you’re a new parent when you say "beep beep" to other adults instead of “excuse me” to exit an elevator.
13. It’s not baby food if you’re a hungry adult. And you will often be a hungry adult.
14. If you don’t cry at the end of movies now, you will once you have a baby because that's when your baby will always wake up and prevent you from finishing movies.
15. The only way a baby without a nap can be more tired is if they wake up five minutes early from a nap.
16. Children’s books are much more entertaining if you read all of the rhymes like the characters are in a rap battle.
17. When your baby is teething, make sure to get plenty of teething toys. They will help relieve stress. You should probably get your baby some too.
18. Balancing life as a parent is like balancing a 50-foot stack of blocks on a pile of dirty clothes while your baby tries to knock them down.
19. What happens in Vegas is nothing compared to the gamble you make when you leave the house with a baby who hasn't taken a nap.
20. The f-bomb in your house is about to change to “fever.”
21. Babies don’t have breakfast, lunch and dinner times. They have food spilling, stealing and throwing times. And those are all of the time.
22. Baby on Board stickers are more impressive than 26.2 stickers because you can't put a number on the marathon it takes to raise a baby.
23. Clean Baby and Eating Baby are like Clark Kent and Superman. You never see them at the same time.
24. When you wake up on a Saturday in a cold sweat thinking it's a workday, you’ll always be right when you’re a parent.
25. Romantics wear their hearts on their sleeves. New parents wear spit up on their sleeves.

All of these jokes and more are included in the brand new book The ParentNormal Crash Course: Everything Traditional Parenting Books Are Afraid to Tell You About Close Encounters of the Baby, Toddler and Third-Year Kind. Available now on Amazon.com.