1. Fun 'new' games always end in disaster.
For example: Pretend toe biting. Running around with a bucket on your head. Any kind of tickling. Never underestimate a small child's ability to take an idyllic family moment and shower it with tears and blood. Oh and yes, it is all your fault. You started it. Good luck explaining a severed toe with a child's tooth in it at the hospital.
How To Have A Baby Without Losing Your Shit
2. Children are a useful tool for arguments.
Maybe Mummy could get you some milk as she's had such a lovely long lie in?
No problem Daddy clearly has no idea where we keep the sippy cups.
Remember! Every time you do this a fairy punches another fairy in the face. Hard.
3. Everyone worries they've had children too early in life.
And if you have had them too late. You will have both these thoughts an equal amount of times no matter if you had children at 18 or 48. Oh and yes you probably should have had them earlier. Or later. Whatever. You did it wrong.
4. Sometimes you get to the shop on a Sunday morning before it has opened.
You will remember that you have done this before only the last time you did it you were in desperate need of cheap vodka and cigarettes. Now you are waiting for nappies and milk.
Try not to cry. Maybe buy the vodka for old times' sake- it is Sunday.
5. Everyone judges parents with older/more children than you.
I am never doing *that* with my children. If I had a pound for everything I said I would never do that I went on to did do.... Well, let's just say I would not have had to jam a plastic pirate dubloon into the coin slot of the supermarket trolley last week.
6. Everyone patronizes parents with younger/ fewer children.
Backpacking? Round Thailand? With a 6 month old baby? Hahahaha just wait you'll see… You will then be really annoyed when they don't see and actually their trip to the temples of Chiang Mai with baby Esme turns out to be the adventure of a lifetime. Inconsiderate gits.
7. Parents constantly set new house rules.
These rules will be abandoned within minutes. Possibly seconds.
Never write down rules and display them. That 'No pooing on the sofa' sign simply alerts all visitors to the sorry fact that your sofa has, at some point, been pooed upon.
8. Children can make you look stupid.
You will realise this half way through explaining something simple in public. Like 'Why do plants need water?' This is why you should always explain things in a whisper so you can make stuff up.
9. Sometimes you will look at another crappy handmade card and wish it was a shop bought one.
10. You will start spelling words out loud.
Like old people do when they make racist comments. Either way you will hate yourself. Are we going S.W.I.M.M.I.N.G? This is because you can NEVER mention doing something if there is even the slightest chance it may not happen .Anyone who has ever been turned away from soft play because of a private party will warn you of the post traumatic stress it can cause.