Veteran Mom? Not quite.

Today I embarked upon a project to scan the important articles in all my old parenting magazines so that I can donate the magazines to a women's shelter or something and get them out of my house. In the process, I found a couple of gems that inspired a chuckle. The article gives one funny anecdote about new moms and counters it with what the veteran mom would do instead. I think I'm somewhere in between on the new mom - veteran mom scale. I bet by the time the next child comes into our family, I will totally understand what all my veteran mom friends have been telling me. (So much for doing things better the next time around!)

A new mom signs up for the IQ-Booster Toy of the Month
Club because she dreams of her burgeoning genius playing for hours each month
with the educational toy the mailman brings.

A veteran mom knows that the only thing that occupies her child for hours is playing with that string of dust flapping at the bottom of the fridge--and, frankly, she isn't abou tto clean it. However, he will enterain himself for a good ten minutes with the box that the IQ-Booster toy comes in.

A new mom will go to great lengths to split everything evenly among her child and his playmates. If there's only one chocolate chip cookie, she'll divide it into equal portions.

A veteran mom will eat the extra chocolate chip cookie faster than the kids can yell "No fair!" Moreover, she won't feel even one iota of guilt.

from American Baby January 2005

I could add one of my own to these: A new mom keeps all the old parenting magazines to preserve access to all the wonderful bits of parenting information in them. A veteran mom knows better than to think she'll actually spend precious seconds of free time reading parenting magazines, when she knows she'll figure relevant things out as they come anyway...probably on the internet or on the phone with a fellow veteran mom friend or the doctor's office. So what do I do? I split the middle and scan the interesting articles. See? I'm not quite a veteran mom. Or maybe it's just my personality. Either way, I've just been inspired to pitch the magazines and rely once again on Google to get me through my parenting questions. Graduation to veteran motherhood must not be far off...