mom dressed as superhero
Encouragement Fun Stuff Lists

10 Clues Becoming a Parent has Turned You into a Superhero

By Emily Ramirez

1.

You spawned a life. Not to take away from the male, um, contribution, but growing a baby in your stomach, and then surviving their transition to the outside world, seems like pretty convincing street cred supporting your new superhero status.

2.

You can see seconds into the future. You know before anyone else does that your kid is about test the gravitational pull of the earth with their forehead. You are aware of their next move before they are aware of their next move. If you had more time on your hands, you could open up a 1-800 hotline and tell people their (immediate) futures, but let’s be honest. If you had more time on your hands, you’d take a shower and maybe, just maybe, brush your teeth.

3.

You have superhuman reflexes that, when coupled with Superhero power #2 mentioned above, allow you to prevent any number of daily disasters. You can catch your kid, mid-fall, and have an uncanny ability to snare anything making the short journey from your kids mouth to their party dress. These same reflexes have saved your toddler AND your iPhone from a watery toilet grave/unwelcome wastewater booty bath. You could probably catch a fly with chopsticks, but then you’d just be showing off.

4.

You can survive on minimal sleep for years and somehow not turn into a Supervillain. Usually.

5.

Your nutritional needs are somehow met by some combination of eating scraps of small slobbery cracker bits, and sips of pureed food product you squish out of the bottom of packets before throwing them away (and feeling eternally guilty for feeding your kid out of something so wasteful, BUT IT’S THE ONLY THING SHE EATS).

6.

You have superhuman hearing. Not only can you hear even the most subtle of midnight whimpers cluing you into an oncoming cold, but you can hear silence, and in a household where toddlers reside, silence is the most concerning sound of all.

7.

While we are on the topic of superhuman senses, you can smell your own child’s feces from across the library. Knowing this, I propose a shift in the old fart saying to “If you smelt it, your child dealt it.”

8.

You can multitask like an octopus on speed. Enough said.

9.

You can stop an oncoming car in its tracks by using only your eyes. (This has only been proven effective when standing on the sidewalk at a crosswalk, which admittedly may play a role. Do not try this at home.)

10.

Your heart now resides outside of your body. This was not explained clearly during your hospital discharge, and none of your postpartum appointments addressed this, but somehow your heart now walks two steps ahead of you, skipping through puddles and sniffing flowers on the side of the road. Anything that can survive with their heart on the outside of their bodies HAS to be a Superhero.

Related: Babies are Hard and Toddlers are Awesome!



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