If I taught the parenting classes...

If you haven't noticed, I adore being a mother.  I find parenting a small human to be a special art that one has to perfect and tweak every single day.  I have had dreams of teaching actual parenting courses at some point in my life.  I think I would be good at it.  Maybe some day.  Maybe for now, I'll focus on my own and if I don't ruin them...I will share what worked with others roaming aimlessly around the aisles of parenthood.

When it all started, Brian and I took a birthing class.  It consisted of 6 weeks of preparing for the big day.  Day.  One single day.  It seemed like a lot of preparation for something that in retrospect went by in the blink of an eye. I was thinking the other day about some things I might teach expecting parents if I were in charge.  

For the actual birthing preparation my advice to expectant fathers would be easy.  Brush your teeth so when you're in her face breathing like a maniac, you don't piss her off with your dragon breath.  Next, wear something other than your Raiders T-shirt please.  The pictures you take that day will go down in history.  While I'm there...please don't wear a baseball cap.  Look like you're at your child's birth and not t-ball practice.  Done.  

To mothers.  Wearing a clothespin on your earlobe while practicing your breathing is simply not helpful.  Childbirth hurts like a mother f-er and you just can't simulate it.  Sure, the breathing gives you a focus but...  My advice is to believe in yourself.  Your body was made to have babies.  Get an epidural or don't.  Either way...that baby is coming regardless of whether you are Hee Hee Ha-ing.  Watch "A Baby Story" and you'll be fine.

In our classes we had a lesson on how to diaper a baby.  What should have been taught is how to change a baby who has shit up his/her back and is continuing to spew as you remove the diaper.  There is an art to removing a onesie without smearing it all over your child on the way up.

Another lesson was having to carry a doll around for the duration of the night's class.  What should have been done was teaching me how to carry  a 10 or even 20 pound bag of rice in one hand while going to the bathroom, making a sandwich, OK...just all day.

We had a class on how to install and buckle a car seat properly.  What we weren't told is that the child we were expecting would eventually arch their body and punch us in the face while we did that simple task.  I also was never told that the adorable print on my car seat would soon be saturated with piss.  

I would teach these parents how to restrain a child with his/her leg on the floor while brushing his/her kids teeth.

Parents should be taught how to put down a sleeping child in a crib seamlessly.  All creaks in the floor should be located and fixed before birth.  Two hours of rocking can be spoiled in one faulty step and then the f-word is taught to your child at too young an age.

What about a class titled, "Three Different Thirty Minute Meals".  Really...you are either a magician or a darn liar if you sit at a table and always eat the same meal as your kids.  It takes talent to pull that off.  

I would make sure to include a class on vomit.  My memories of vomiting as a child are of me leaned over the toilet with my parent rubbing my back or putting a cool cloth on the back of my neck.  I have no memories of vomiting as a wee one.  So...none of us are prepared the first time our baby actually pukes.  They don't say, "Uh, mom I think I am going to throw up."  They just do...no matter where they are.  I was not prepared when it happened.  The parents in my class will be ready.

I think it should be mentioned that although it is great when your child is stable enough to sit in the shopping cart, it isn't forever.  One day you will actually have to shop with two kids walking next to the cart.  Octopus hands will grab every glass bottle on the shelves.  "Clean up on aisle 5" has been heard over the intercom several times in my life as a mom.  

At the end of my dream parenting course I would be sure to add that your heart will function in ways you never thought it would.  You won't love your children in the conventional way that love works.  It is a different kind of love.  Very unlike the love you have for anyone else.  It is a love that makes you stare at your children until you cry.  You will find yourself sniffing their hair when you hug them.  You will open their door at bedtime just to look at them.  Your clothing will be covered with food and unmentionable fluids and you won't care.  I guess it really is something you can't prepare for...but that is up to you to decide.