The Baby Book Burden

I'm not a real fan of "baby books." So sue me.

The IDEA is great, don't get me wrong: preserving that oh-so-transient joy of getting to know a brand-spanking-new human being. Watching her graduate from those tiniest of onesies, to the incredibly voluminous (by comparison) 12-pound variety. It's very sweet, blah blah blah.

If you're pregnant for the first time (you know who you are) you won't believe me when I say: you will not have TIME to properly tend to a baby book. I don't care if you heard that infants sleep 20 hours a day. You forgot to read on for the part that states: "…in 20-minute intervals, punctuated by brain-melting shrieks."

If you have an infant (you may *not know who you are, what with all the sleep deprivation) you probably won't believe me when I say: your baby will not be an infant for long, and besides sleeping through every single solitary spare moment, you will FORGET every pertinent baby detail and be forced to fabricate the very information you so covetously want to preserve.

So I have a couple of suggestions.

My first and best tip is to borrow somebody else's baby book (preferably Martha Stewart's) and COPY it. Those academic oaths you took in school do not apply; it's perfectly legal. Just don't copy the same one for each kid, or they may eventually catch on.

Okay, I was prepared to have that one not go over too well. But trust me, your child will never know the difference, and neither will you after a couple of years.

Sure, I was all ethical and moral in the beginning, too. (Pop a kid out, and something happens to your brain.) I wanted to make the world a better place single-handedly. Solve those pesky problems of hunger, poverty, war, and speaking in very loud voices. It was very noble, blah blah blah.

I hadn't yet learned that parenthood is about SURVIVAL, not about perfect baby books. Eventually I came around, and came up with my runner-up idea.

Delegate!

Oh, stop gasping, already. And, NO, I'm not talking about "Daddy." Get real.

Here's the deal: choose a contemporary, such as your best friend, sister, or the closest Mormon missionary you can get your hands on. So long as she is a woman (testosterone and baby books definitely don't mix) and any children she has are safely in school-aged or better. Truthfully, I think this should be the assigned task for the chosen Godmother, since the traditional responsibilities don't really translate to modern-day family life.

"Marge, we've thought about it, and we want you to…"
"Be responsible for your beautiful baby's religious guidance, lifetime of emotional support and attachment, and trust fund?!?!?!?"
"No, keep the baby book."
"Wow, what a responsibility…"

But it's really not all that humongous a task to any reasonably normal human being (other than a new mother.) An independent party will do a much better job, because:

• She gets 8 hours of sleep every night.
  
• She still keeps pens available around the house, even though she read somewhere that ink can be toxic.
  
• She can keep track of baby's progress objectively and consistently, excepting margarita night.
  
• She will have better penmanship, simply on account of she's not multi-tasking with the football hold.
  
• She is not daunted by the thought of putting two sentences together, when she hasn't changed out of her PJs in three days straight.