Today I’m linking up with Theme Thursday. This week’s theme is:
“Things I Wish I Knew Before I Became A Parent.”
The first thing that comes to mind is sleep. I wish I had known the value of sleep, and how it’s better than chocolate. Make that better than chocolate fudge brownies served on a gold platter by singing unicorns. Had I known the value of sleep, I would have purchased hundreds of shares of this valuable commodity back when it was cheap.
Instead, I was busy chasing those stupid unicorns (and by chasing unicorns, I mean going to the bar, talking on the phone, watching TV, or basically doing anything that wasn’t sleeping because I could always sleep in the next day).
Sleeping in- that’s what it’s called,right? When you do that thing where you wake up and the sun is actually out, and you look at your clock it and it doesn’t start with a 6 (or a 5, God forbid!)?
I also wish that I had known that children have temper tantrums even when they have good parents.
I always assumed when I saw kids misbehaving in public that it was because their parents didn’t discipline them properly. In some cases this is true, but I also now realize that I severely overestimated the parents’ responsibility in these melt downs.
Sometimes kids throw fits. They just do. And had I known this, I might have done a little less eye-rolling back when I thought I knew everything.
I also wish I had realized that no matter how busy I felt in those pre-baby days, I had a lot of spare time. I never felt like I did, but that’s because I spent a lot of it doing trivial things like styling my hair and watching Real Housewives marathons. And showering.
Maybe if I knew how much spare time I had, back then, I would have been more productive. Maybe I would have taken a photography class or cleaned out my basement. (Yeah right.)
But here’s the thing- I don’t actually wish I had known any of these things, because I’m truly having an awesome time figuring it out bit by bit. And I have my daughter to thank for teaching me so many lessons that I would never have learned on my own.
And now, I really do appreciate the value of sleep. And showers.
I’m linking up with Theme Thursday. If you like Thursday and themes, then maybe you should too!
