Dear Baby,
Welcome to the world! We are so excited you could join us. You may be all cozily swaddled and sleeping like a baby (get it, baby? Of course you don't. You don't know what a sense of humor is yet! Sorry, baby! But trust me, it's funny! I will explain to you when you are older) with your belly full of warm milk, but it won't be long before your father or I are doing terrible things to you.
No, baby! Don't furrow your little baby brow like that while you are sleeping like you understand what I am saying! We won't do terrible things to you on purpose. We love you and will do anything to protect you! But they will be terrible things regardless, because all parents do some truly terrible things to their babies.
We will:
1. Make your tiny fingers bleed when we cut your nails. No matter how careful we are.
2. Let you roll off a high surface, like a bed or sofa.
3. Lose the one pacifier you cannot sleep without. Or else drop it down the garbage disposal while the garbage disposal is running.
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4. Get poop on your head when we are changing you.
5. Let you cry for two minutes while we are doing something utterly selfish, like washing the conditioner out of our hair.
6. Make you wear something ridiculous and uncomfortable simply because it's adorable.
7. Ruin your life on social media before you can even turn on a computer by telling everyone we know how you peed in your own bathwater.
8. Let you pee in your own bathwater.
9. Make you eat mushy baby-food peas.
10. Let strange old people you aren't comfortable with hold you, and they may smell like mothballs and violets.
11. Raise your hands above your head constantly and say HOW BIG IS BABY? SO BIG!!!! whether you want us to or not.
12. Have a shiny small box that lights up and that we always seem to be looking at, and when you grab for it we will say, "No baby, that's Mommy's phone."
13. Let you eat our hair ...
14. ... and our necklaces
15. ... and your own feet
16. ... and dust bunnies when you start to crawl.
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17. Let you hold for two minutes the shiny, jangly things Mommy keeps in her purse that she uses to start the go-thing, but we will take them away just when they are getting fun because we will be convinced you will poke them in your eye.
18. Inadverantly let you poke the shiny, jangly things in your eye.
19. Put locks on things to keep you from enjoying them. Like the refrigerator.
20. Let you fall asleep in our arms, and then evvvvvvver so gently stand up, carry you to your room ... and bonk your head on the door frame.
So there you have it, baby. As wonderful and as magical as your first few years on this planet will be, you can also look forward to some pretty terrible things happening. Welcome to the world, baby!
Images via Smolina Marianna/Shutterstock