10 Parenting Truths.

In parenting, there aren't many things you can completely count on. Kids have a magical way of taking your perfect, thought out plans and throwing them down the toilet (along with your tooth brush, wallet, and cell phone). However, I've compiled this list of Absolute Truths, if you will, that you can always rely on, every day, no matter what. Just to help make your life a bit easier.

1. The more time and money you spend on preparing a meal, the less likely your kids are to eat it. However, if you reach for that beautiful blue box of mac 'n cheese, they will proclaim it "the best dinner in the whole wide world!".

2. If you want to ensure an unusually long nap from your baby or toddler, just schedule someplace important to be. Before you know it, you'll be pacing back and forth in front of their door, jacket on, diaper bag packed, car running outside, waiting until the last possible second to wake them up, at which point they will throw a blessed fit because you dared to wake them up.

3. If you want to ensure an unusually short nap, get sick, have a migraine, or need to work from home. As with the above, they will throw a blessed fit because they didn't get enough rest. And that's undoubtedly your fault...surely they heard you breathing or blinking, or wiping your nose three rooms away.

4. The more "adult" beverages you consume during your annual date night with your spouse or significant other, the more times your kids will wake up that night. I actually believe it's a 1:1 ratio.

5. TMI warning on this one: If your cloth diaper wearing baby is a tad backed up, fear not. Simply do a load of diaper laundry. When everything is on the last spin cycle (when it's too late to throw in a dirty diaper), voila! Instant poop to end all poops.

6. If you have been trying to get your child to eat something (a fruit or veggie specifically), and week after week you end up tossing said food in the garbage because it spoils, stop buying it. That is when they will finally take an interest, and refuse to eat anything else because they "neeeeeeed" a pear.

7. The more money you spend on bottles, pacifiers, sippy cups, the less likely they are to take them. Bring them over a friend's house, where they get their hands on another kids bottle, pacifier, or sippy, and that is the one they will love and demand. Bonus points for it being discontinued or not sold online or in retail stores within a 583 mile radius.

8.  The more your resist a particular toy or kids TV show, the more they fall in love with it. I should have resisted books and quiet time. But nooooo, I fought SpongeBob and toy guns.

9. The second you sit down for the first time in 18 days, your children will begin fighting, will need a drink, a snack, a splinter pulled out of their foot. At some point, all soft sitting type surfaces are secretly implanted with a "mommy is trying to rest" alert chip. Unfortunately, having those surfaces reupholstered won't help. Neither will buying new. Or moving.

10. Just when you think your children can't be cuter and sweeter, and that you can't POSSIBLY love them any more...they can...and you do. Oh come on, you didn't think this would be all sarcasm, did you?? ;-)