Toddlers are not for the weak - Part 1

There are plenty of books and information about preparing for a baby but what about preparing for when that baby turns into a sassy, bossy toddler? What books warn you about that period between 2 and a half and 4 years old? I’ve worked with children this age for years but my twins still surprise me every day.

So here’s how I think couples can prepare for a toddler. Keep in mind you should be taking turns so that both people can truly experience first handed what’s coming for them. Some of them you can do together, too, like number 7.

1. Greet your partner in a different way every day when they get home from work. Go from pure happiness to absolute disgust and say things like “Ugh, why did you come back?” or “I was having fun until you came”. Make sure if they offer to give you 5 more minutes you act as if they’re abandoning you in a desert. Invite some friends over for this, too, so they can truly feel the embarrassment.
2. Same applies when they go to work. Make it a “just-given-up-for-adoption” kind of performance. Then shake it off the second they walk out the door and live your best life for the morning as if nothing happened, just so they can feel totally shit the entire time they’re in work but for no reason at all, really.
3. Act as if you were a gremlin who was fed after midnight every morning when the alarm goes off to go to work, but wake them up as if you were ready to go on a 3-day rave at 5.30am on Saturdays and Sundays.
4. Whenever you’re both going to leave the house and have to be on time for anything at all, pretend you were given a slow-motion pill and you cannot move at normal human speed if your life depended on it. Pretend you’ve forgotten how to complete basic skills, such as putting on your shoes.
5. Cry. Just cry a lot, at least twice an hour. They make you a cup of tea? Cry. They make your favourite dinner? Cry. You asked them a question and they answer? Cry.
6. Get them fully dressed when they’re really drunk. But not during the passed-out-drunk stage. You have to do it when they’re at the stage where they think they can do anything and they don’t want to go home despite all their friends are trying to get them into cab, at the stage where they are running around the street trying to climb up a lamp post or jump into a fountain.
7. Give cocaine to a cat and then give it a bath.
8. Constantly say you’re starving but refuse every single meal they make you, then eat whatever is on their own plate.
9. Go out for a meal in a restaurant and sit on their lap while they’re trying to eat their dinner. While you’re at it, spill their drink (and your drink) a couple of times, stab them with a fork at least twice and ask them to walk you to the bathroom every 45 seconds. While walking through the restaurant bump into every chair and table that you can see and fall on your face, at least 4 times.
10. Ask them to take you somewhere and then pick up a fight when you get there. Make sure you go full-on psycho, like how dare they actually bring you where you asked to be brought?

(sigh) ...Brace yourself!