Get Your Preparedness Badge

Parenting seems to be one place where the Boy Scout motto doesn’t apply.  Sure, you can “Be Prepared,” but I’ve found that there are turns in the trail that couldn’t have been foreseen.

My son, for example, was nothing I imagined. First, I hoped for a girl. Not only did our baby turn out to be a boy, he’s huge: 10 months, 25+ pounds, more than 30 inches tall, and busting percentiles all over the place. I certainly didn’t predict that my biggest challenge at this stage would be wrestling a kid with the personality of an infant, and the body of a toddler, into a car seat.  As you rub your belly and dream in these blissful months when any kind of kid is still possible, you could be registering for a baby food maker and cookbooks and bookmarking recipes online for organic millet and pureed pear.  Then you give birth to a baby so picky his daily menu consists of two food groups: the Cheerios group and the boob group. Fortunately, there’s always

Things I Wasn’t Prepared For

• How fast my son would grow
• Hiring a sitter for the first time
• Baby’s first fever—scary!