1) Wake-up is at 6 a.m. Please do not be late, even by half an hour. (5:30 is good too.) There is hard work to be done for at least the next four hours. You must get right on the job of helping everybody else to rise and shine. If they seem grumpy or reluctant, be extra loud. This is the time for you to really work on your cuteness skills: It is the time when you must be in full control of your smiling, giggling, gurgling and proto-laughing. This will soften any reluctance on the part of your maintenance staff.
2) Do not tolerate solitude, even for a moment. There is no reason for you to put up with being put down on your back, even in a comfy crib, even if you are given bright plastic things to chew on or played music on an expensive moving-screen music player, even for two or three minutes. Let your feelings be known by glass-shattering shrieks. You will hear all sorts of excuses: Your staff had to answer the phone, rescue a boiling pot, urgently urinate…whatever. They will come up with anything. Tough luck. Your job is to be held close at all times, and it is up to you to maintain consistency in this matter. Do not let yourself weaken in the face of their flimsy needs.
3) If you require a little extra attention one week, become sick. Get a runny nose and a cough and watch how things pick up in the maintenance department. With a little luck you will get to spend several hours, maybe even an entire day, waiting in hospitals, which is an ideal environment. There are no silly distractions for your staff (you will hear them whining about “work” as they often do, but they are constrained by the waiting room and can’t indulge these whims), and you will be held and sung to without interruption all day by one person or another. You will discover that you have a great deal of power if you smile and giggle at nurses; this will attract other nurses and soon you will be at the centre of a room full of young women. This is useful training for later in life.
4) Needles. Oh, we are out of space. Don’t worry about it though. Forget all about it. Nobody even said anything about needles.
Image courtesy of candrews on Flickr.
Your columns are humourous, well written and so true. I am a new mom and write daily email updates for my family who live abroad.
You express yourself well and it is good to read a male’s experience.