Life with Young Kids - The Truth

I just couldn't pass up this week's Monday Listicles topic, "10 photos from life with kids."  I have a number of friends who are on the verge of becoming parents or have recently had babies and I thought I'd take this opportunity to impart a few words of wisdom.  You're welcome!

Truths about life with young kids: 

You know how, when you look at other people's kids, and they have snot running down their upper lip and food all over their face, and you think, "I will NEVER let my kids walk around like that?"  The thing is, you will.  And you'll find them irresistibly adorable, even when their noses are snotty and they're covered in sticky food debris.  Sometimes even more so.

They'll give you this look. Frequently.

photo by Adam Schwartz

But then this look will follow closely on its heels, and you'll forget everything else, at least for a few minutes.

They'll come at you like this, especially when you're wearing something brand new and/or white.

They'll try to steal your beer. And your keys. And your phone. The TV remote.  And occasionally your dignity.

photo by Adam Schwartz

You will spend far too many hours of your life trying to dissuade them from eating dirt/sand/gravel/rocks, drinking from dirty sesspools, and generally endangering themselves and others.  It's kind of exhausting.

You will do whatever you can to help them pursue their interests, even when those change more often than their clothes.

They'll make you see the world through new eyes.

They'll make you see their co-creator through new eyes.

They'll teach you more about yourself than you learned in the entire first thirty-odd years of your life before they came along.

The truth?  The truth is, life with kids, while beautiful and fulfilling, is also messy, chaotic, and quite often even uncomfortable. Let's face it, it ain't all unicorns and rainbows. But we parents must be eternal optimists. (Either that, or complete fools.) Because somehow, the unicorn-rainbow moments are the ones that stay with us.