Momservation: “You need a license to buy a dog, or drive a car, hell you can get a license to catch a fish, but they’ll let any butt-reaming a**hole be a father.” Keanu Reeves, “Parenthood”
 

  
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I work best from a manual. I like to have step-by-step instructions on what to do and what should happen next. I also like the security of knowing if I forget something or it doesn’t pan out right I can just go back to the book.

For example, I was all over those What to Expect When You’re Expecting, The Girlfriends Guide to Pregnancy and What to Expect The First Year books with my first baby. I ate those books up like Jared eats Subway.

If the book told me to keep an eating and potty journal I did. If it instructed how to best get an infant to sleep through the night, I followed it to the letter with unwavering consistency. When it showed a chart graphing how babies gradually cry less and less the older they get, I wrote on my calendar the date when there would be more laughing than crying in my house (Mommy included).

Go ahead and roll your eyes, but I’ll have you know both my children walked well before a year, spoke complete sentences at 18 months, were completely potty trained by 20 months, and learned how to ride bikes when they were three.

Call it Type-A personality, good genes, or baby boot camp (that would be Hubby), but I’ll tell you it was a good instruction manual. In my effort to be a good parent I’m not ashamed to seek out advice, help, or use a book that has the word “For Dummies” blazed on the cover.

Now there are some people (read Hubby here) who like to wing it. Whether it be assembling a 50-part game table at midnight on Christmas Eve or throwing together beef stew sans recipe, some people flat out don’t like someone telling them their business.

Unfortunately, opposites attract and those of us who do like instructions are usually stuck with people who keep us up until three in the morning reassembling game tables and eating beef stew that tastes like chicken.

So imagine my surprise when prior to bringing home our new puppy Hubby brings home the book Puppies for Dummies. And it wasn’t for me – it was for him!

Knock me over with a feather, he actually read the book too! This from a man who won’t read anything unless it’s in a bathroom and he’s got some time to kill. But it was great to see him finally subscribing to my theory that life just seems easier when it comes with instructions.

Obviously, the book is great – as I knew it would be. When nine week-old Darby started getting nippy with the kids we turned to the book and learned she was overtired and over-stimulated. When Darby started stealing socks the book taught us a technique to squelch the behavior. We have turned to the book for issues with clothing assault, object envy and crate training and we continue to have success with raising a well-mannered puppy.

Oh, and I’m claiming fully potty-trained by 10 weeks.

Don’t think I can do it?

Did I mention both my kids at ages four and five were riding their bikes 12 miles a week next to me while I went jogging? Okay, that might just be good athletic genetics, but check Parenting for Dummies – I bet it’s in there under How to get Your Kids to Go Right to Bed.