27 things you’ll do in the first year of parenthood.

It has been a year of firsts around here. I have done a lot of things I never expected to do in a million years. Some of it gross. A lot of it completely mental. Most of it hilarious. Here we go…

1. Bathe your baby in the kitchen sink.

2. Fish poop out of the kitchen sink.

3. Sing lullabies so much you find yourself singing them in the car. To yourself. When you’re alone.

4. Get the lullabies out of your head and find you’re now humming the Charlie and Lola theme tune wherever you go.

5. Realise you’ve been sitting and watching CBeebies for an hour while your child is asleep. Worse, you were quite enjoying those back-to-back episodes of Peppa Pig.

6. Say, ‘Don’t lick the kitchen floor’ about 100 times a day.

7. Peg so many onesies and teeny tiny singlets onto the line there’s no room for anyone else’s clothes.

8. Secretly video your baby babbling to their books and toys, because the day will come when they stop doing it and talk instead and it’s so freaking adorable you don’t want to forget.

9. Feed your kid toast for every meal for a week because they refuse to eat anything else.

10. Feed your kid yoghurt for every meal for a week because they refuse to eat anything else.

12. Watch mystified as your child eats everything you put in front of him for an entire week. And sleeps like a champ.

13. Air punch while boasting to your partner, ‘I’ve got this. I’ve sussed it. It’s finally easy! Oh thank God.’

14. Cry to your partner, ‘WTF is going on. He was fine last week, now it’s all gone to hell in a handbasket. What am I doing wrooooong?’

15. Chase poo balls as they roll off the couch when you’re changing a nappy.

16. Find out what makes your kid laugh then do those things over and over and over just to hear that delicious giggle 100 times a day.

17. Be ecstatic when you can finally stop sterilising bottles. Consider doing an Office Space-style baseball bat attack on the steriliser in the backyard.

18. Be genuinely sad when your baby can now hold his own bottle and no longer needs you to do it during feeds.

19. Let your baby run around without a nappy to help heal his nappy rash, only to watch him hold his willy and delightedly do a wee all over the rug.

20. Buy ridiculous contraptions that claim to assist with some tricky aspect of parenting (like the no-tears rubber-fronted hair washing jugs which supposedly keeps soap and water out of the eyes and stops your baby screaming bloody murder every time you try to wash their hair. Except that they don’t work.)

21. Buy your baby his first pair of shoes and have a heart attack at the fact that they cost $50.

22. Wonder how on earth you and your husband will financially cope for the next 20 years.

23. Try and fail to make your kid wear his $50 shoes and eventually give up and allow him to embrace his inner hippie.

24. Tell everyone you’re never cutting his baby curls, ever.

25. Contemplate cutting his baby curls when every second stranger you meet turns to your baby and exclaims, ‘What a GORGEOUS little girl you are!’

26. Lie in bed with your husband with a sleeping baby in the middle of you and smile at each other and find you have no words for how incredibly happy one little kid has made you both.

27. Contemplate having a second. For about 30 seconds.

Anything I missed? What were the things you remember doing a lot in the first year of parenthood?