Your Bundle of Joy

Rebecca posted the following on Tweet January 6th. It is an 11 step program to prepare you for parenthood. The author is unknown but the examples are ones that most parents can relate to. No one can describe to you the impact having a child will have on your life.
The first lesson of the program is to go to the grocery store and make arrangements to have your paycheck direct deposited there. Then you can go home and pick up your favorite reading material, read and enjoy because you will no longer have time after you be a parent.
The second lesson is to find a couple who are already parents. Then berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, and their appallingly low tolerance levels. Tell them about their lack of parenting skills for allowing their children to run wild. Enjoy this lesson as it will be the last time feel that you know any of the answers.
Lesson three will help you discover what nights are like with your new child at night. When you get home from work, begin walking around the house holding a wet bag weighing around 10 pounds. Turn the radio on loud to something obnoxious, like maybe…static. Get up again at 1am, 3am, and 5am and repeat. Then get up in the morning, make breakfast, and go to work. Continue this routine for the next couple years.
Lesson four helps in preparing you for the mess children make. First, smear peanut butter and jam on the furniture, curtains, and pour red punch onto the carpet. Hide a half-eaten hamburger under the bed and leave it all summer. After working in the dirt in your garden, go inside and smear your hands on the walls. Draw on the walls with crayons and markers.
Lesson five is on dressing your small child. Purchase an octopus. Also, buy a small bag made out of mesh. Now, attempt to put the octopus into the mesh bag without any limbs hanging out of the bag. The time allowed for this exercise is all morning.
To prepare you for the look of your new vehicle, lesson six instructs you to buy a mini-van and proceed with the following so it looks like a family car. Put a chocolate ice cream cone in the glove compartment, stick a dime in the CD player, smash cookies into the back seat, and sprinkle Cherrios on the floor and smash them with your foot. Then take a garden rake and run it along both sides of the vehicle.
For lesson seven, you will need the closet thing you can find to a toddler. A good choice would be a goat. Go grocery shopping while you make sure you know where and what the goat is doing. Then pay for your groceries and everything the goat ate and destroyed.
Lesson eight will prepare you to feed your small child. Hollow out a melon, put a small hole in the side, and suspend it from the ceiling and swing it side to side. Get a bowl of soggy Cherrios and try to spoon them into the melon while pretending to be an airplane. When the Cherios are half gone, tip half in your lap and throw the other half into the air. This will prepare you to feed a 9-month old baby.
Learn the names of every character on Sesame Street, Barney, Teletubbies, and Pokemon for lesson nine. Watch only these programs.
For lesson ten make record Fran Drescher saying “mommy” repeatedly. It is important that there be no more than a four second delay between each “mommy”. You are now ready for a road trip with you toddler.
And finally, for lesson eleven find an adult of your choice and try to have a conversation while having someone tug on your skirt hem and playing the “mommy” tape. Now, you know how to have a conversation with your child in the room.