19 Things You Learn The Hard Way When You Have A Toddler

    Bye bye, baby.

    Funny dad Chris Cate has three small kids at home, so he knows a thing or three about what it's like raising toddlers.

    He recently published a book — The ParentNormal Crash Course: Everything Traditional Parenting Books Are Afraid to Tell You About Close Encounters of the Baby, Toddler and Third-Year Kind — and shared some toddler truisms from it with us:

    1. 95% of helping a toddler who falls down is trying not to laugh at how they fell down.

    2. You will legitimately want to know if it is called a high chair because of its height or because your toddler acts like they’re on drugs in a restaurant.

    3. You will always know if your toddler was playing in a sandbox because the sandbox will fall out of their shoes as soon as they take them off.

    4. After a while, you’ll stop giving your toddler so many gifts and start giving your toddler so many bribes.

    5. Toddlers always go the extra mile... when they are running away from you in a public place.

    6. The sound of a toddler snoring in your ear every night will be your blessing and your curse.

    7. Toddler paintings are like constellations. Somebody has to tell you what you’re looking at, and then you see it, kind of.

    8. Sharing food with a toddler is like sharing an armrest with a stranger. Give them a little and they'll take it all.

    9. You say potato. I say potato. A toddler says, "No!" and throws it on the floor.

    10. People who say don’t sweat the small stuff have never tried to pick up a thousand goldfish crumbs from between the couch cushions.

    11. Toddlers are surprisingly bad at understanding their parents considering how often they walk around in their parents' shoes.

    12. Trying to figure out the right plate and food combination for a toddler is like trying to complete a Rubik’s Cube for the first time, every time.

    13. If there is something on the floor that can crumble into a million pieces, a toddler will step on it one second before you can get to it.

    14. Sharing is a foreign concept to toddlers until you have something they want. Then, they're experts on the subject.

    15. Booster seats are excellent for helping toddlers who aren’t quite tall enough to crawl onto the kitchen table.

    16. Toddlers don't see trashcans. They see lost and founds.

    17. All day long you will be reminding your toddler to use their words and all night long you will be reminding your toddler to stop using their words.

    18. Toddlers never have awkward silences, only nefarious silences.

    19. Once you teach your toddler to cover their mouth when they cough, you will just need to get them to stop using your face as the cover.