To those of you without children, and to those of you with a newborn.

The day is coming that parenting will become second nature. Hell, it will pretty much become first nature.

Promise.

The memories of leaving a house with a newborn/infant still frighten me. The toys, the nursing pads, the bottles, the burp cloths, the change of clothes, the binkies, the blankets, the nursing cover, the bibs, the spoons, the baby food, the high chair cover, the holycowhowdidIevermakeitpastthisstagewithoutdrinking.

There will come a day (remember I only have one…) that you will switch over to a big girl purse and find that even without that artillery of a diaper bag you are just as prepared for anything a small human can throw at you (or fall in) than you were with it.

Take the pootastrophe on Friday. Cody watched her fall in and just stared with his mouth open grunting “EW EW EW”. I however was taken over, wipes appeared as if from no where (seriously, I had just packed them in my purse that day.) Plastic bags were found. Poo was cleaned off, no help from Cody who hid behind the car making stink faces.

I have seen moms catch balls thrown at their heads without missing a beat in their conversation. I have seen moms clean muddy shorts with nothing more than a sippy cup and a steel fence. I can carry a conversation in the car with the moosh about Pinnocchio and one with Cody about Rodger Clemens at the same time.

Someday the cries of a baby will no longer pull you from your warm bed at night and you will be able to fall asleep without thinking every squeak of a tire outside may be the squeak of a baby trying to wake up. However there will still by cries, cries of sick little kids with fevers or scared little kids with nightmares.

But this time it will be your heart that wakes you up, not your ears.

It will be your heart that will pull you into the other room because the little body lying in that little bed is a piece of your heart walking around on the outside of your body. There will be no referencing of parenting books at one a.m. There will be no googling of Croup symptoms at two a.m.

You will just know.

And you will fix it. Whether it’s a warm compress on little chubby legs suffering from growing pains or a cold washcloth across a sweaty fevered forehead. You will be able to fix it. Because you are the mom. And moms are superheroes.

Even if you never realized it before.