Parenting 101.

Well, we've been pseudo-parents to our niece for the past month, and I feel compelled to mention a few of the things I've learned from parenting other people's kids.

1. Sleep is a nonrenewable resource. And while gas is expensive, I'd pay WAY more than $2.09 a gallon for some sleep.
2. On the flip side, you can stay up late whenever you like. I'm a bit of a night owl, but I force myself to keep more normal hours, going to bed before 11 most nights, but staying up as late as 1 a.m. on weekends (wild, I know). Well, now it doesn't matter which night I stay up late, because we're getting up by 6:3o every morning no matter what day of the week it is. It's kind of liberating, really.
3. Kids are pretty forgiving. This one HATES to have her nose cleaned. Unfortunately for her, I'm a bit compulsive about kids' dirty noses, AND she's been sick virtually since she got her. But even after I have to scrape the crust off her nose so she can breathe once again, she's only hateful to me for a few minutes, and then we're best friends again.
4. The reason people with kids never want to do anything (besides the aforementioned exhaustion) is not so much the kid itself. It's the arduous process of putting the kid in the carseat, getting her out, back in, back out, stroller, diaper bag, blah blah blah. I find myself going to stores I normally would avoid if it allows me to combine a trip or hit two stores in the same complex to get stuff done, and one day--in a fit of utter desperation, as we were both sick and she couldn't stop crying unless I drove and I couldn't stop crying unless my headache went away--I drove about 10 miles out of my way just to get to the Starbucks with a drive-thru. Then drove the 10 miles back, slurping my Frappuccino and enjoying a few blessed minutes of silence because she'd finally fallen asleep.
5. Kids' clothes are a double-edged sword for me. They're so cute that you want to buy her tons of stuff. BUT, they're so cute you can hardly bear to put them on her because just about everywhere she goes and everything she does, she gets dirty.
6. Digital cameras are the best thing ever. Taking 20 pictures to get one good one might just be a fool's game now, but I'm not above it. And before digital, it was an EXPENSIVE fool's game, if you got a roll developed and only had 2 good shots on the whole thing. Just take the pictures until the battery runs out or the baby stops doing fun stuff. Babies RARELY stop doing fun stuff, so buy lots of batteries.

Well, I'm sure there'll be more things that I'm just now learning that everyone else who took care of a kid knew a long time ago. But it's all new to me.