Motherhood doesn’t just change your pants size, your shoe size, and your selection at Victoria’s Secret, Motherhood changes EVERYTHING.  And then it keeps on changing. ALL. THE. TIME. You will just get your parenting stride at a stage, and your little darling is sprinting on to the next one.

To those of you already sporting stretch marks, under eye circles, and the requisite Real-Moms-Take-This-Shizz-Everywhere hand sanitizer, you know we speak The Truth. You know what would make this whole Mom thing easier short of a trainer, an industrial strength leash, and an ironclad agreement with the relatives to babysit every weekend?? Some Sisters to show you the way.

Now we’ve heard there are some great parenting books out there, but, honestly, you won’t have time to read them. Remember what we said about the sprinting?? But we love books, so we took some inspiration from classic books and children’s books to label the stages of Motherhood for you. We did the heavy lifting, so fanfare, please. . .

1. War and Peace

The First Year

Now Erin has never actually read this book, but we heard that it concerns Russia. The title conjures what it feels like in the trenches of your first year with a new baby. It’s either bliss. . . or bombs raining down on you. Prepare to be delighted, completely decimated, and so deprived of sleep you could put on your husband’s underwear and think it’s your own or fall asleep mid-sentence. Not that either of these things has ever happened to either of us.

2. What Do People Do All Day?

The Second Year

Hope you like naming aloud everything you own, see, think, hear, feel, smell, flush down the toilet, etc. because that’s what baby likes. Oh, that’s not for me, you say, my kid’s just chillin’. Well, we say that clearly you have never been at the mercy of a newly mobile but vocabulary-limited tot. YET. They jonez for this stuff like miniature meth addicts cut off from their supplier. Buy every oversized, ridiculously detailed book you can find now to assuage the tiny beasts. Richard Scarry knows. He’s the toddler-whisperer.

3. Where the Wild Things Are

The Third and Fourth Year AKA The Terrible/Terrific Twos and Threes

These kids are adorable but nuts, with a little extra nutty on top. Every time we think back to when our houses were ruled by these fickle tyrants, there is a little catch in our throats. We  do miss our ladies who dressed as princesses or ladybugs every day and our lads bedecked in boots and capes. But it’s a dog-eat-dog world  in the Land of Tod and we’ll give you three guesses who’s their favorite meal. Come to think of it, Lord of the Flies works for this stage too.

4. Interrupting Chicken

The Funny Fabulous Fact-Filled Four Year Old

Erin is 100% convinced that she did not have her attention issues until she had to parent a 4 year old—FIVE TIMES! No sentences are finished, no thoughts completed, no work is done. The four year old runs the place like a miniature Napoleon or Attila the Hun and the only consistent thing he or she is serving up is questions. Note: When the 4 year old inevitably asks you where babies come from or why you and Daddy like to wrestle, deflect, defer, and lie your pants off. You have plenty of time to pay for future counselling.

5. Brave New World 

Kindergarten

This stage marks the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, so all that sniffling and carrying on you’re going to do is totally justified. Your baby belongs to the great big world now. And it’s a beautiful, terrible, amazing, nauseating, wondrous sight to see.

6. The Call of the Wild

Early Elementary School

Seriously, kids at this age are powered by sheer force of will and their wily, wily ways. If we could harness it, we would solve the world’s energy needs. Oh, yeah, and they are full throttle without the benefit of forethought or reason. Invest in Band-Aids and mercurochrome and wine.

7. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde

Late Elementary School

As a pre-cursor to the full-blown hormonal onslaught headed your way, Mother Nature gives you a little tapas of what’s to come. Honestly, a lot of the angst comes from having one foot in the Land of the Little Kid and the other in the Acreage of Adolescence, but that doesn’t mean that this stage isn’t sometimes going to keep you up at night or wrangling with each other during the day.

8. Something Wicked This Way Comes 

Middle School

Too dramatic? Maybe, especially when we both actually enjoy our Middle Schoolers and Erin loves teaching this age group. But storms are a-comin’, so you need to be ready to ride them out when they come AND to enjoy the calm seas in between the blow-ups.

9. Catch-22

Early Teen

Your tongue might actually hurt from all the times you will hold it. Happy, successful parenting with teens is all about choosing your battles, so often times you may get caught in senseless, absurd situations. We’ll take those over the scary stuff that also sometimes comes with the teen years, but none of it is easy. And <sniff>, you do sense your time together is shortening.

10. Great Expectations

Late Teen

Your baby’s getting ready to spread his or her wings, so there is great talk about the future and plans and what happens next. It’s all exciting and scary and nothing at all like what you imagined when you started this journey, oh so many moons ago.

And you will wonder how you got here so fast.

And then you’ll remember. Oh, the sprinting.

 

Don’t say we didn’t warn you! Erin and Ellen

 

Thank you to Stasha for more great Monday Listicle fun! Check out what others wrote or add your own list!