Things Your Baby Will Bring to the Table - Guest Post by Rob Shepherd

Rob Shepherd is one of my internet twins. Sometimes I read his posts aloud...before he's posted them.

He's a blogger, pastor, husband and father of twins, which is why I'm honored he would write a guest post for me while Jana and I are trying to figure out how to be parents for the first time (P.S. - if you have some extra sleep, please feel free to email it to me).

I wrote a guest post for him a while back. If you haven't read it yet and would like to laugh at me in my absence, click these four words after you read Rob's list of things your baby will bring to the table.

You're up, Rob...

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Being a dad of five month old twins, I think that I can write with great authority about what your baby is going to bring to the table. Now when I write 'table', I mean things they are going to be good at when they are first born.

• Pooping. Babies are great at this. The first couple of poos look like they ate straight oil in the womb. It’s gross.  One benefit of all this pooping is that you can blame all of your funky smells on them and no one will question it.
• Crying. I don’t know if your kid will be as gifted as mine, but my kids were gifted criers when they were first born. They would cry in the middle of the night on a consistent basis.  They also would wait to cry until we sat down to eat, watch a TV show, or try to sleep ourselves. Good luck with that.
• Sleep. They sleep a lot. For our first week of parenting my wife and I looked at each other and said, “parenting is easy.” Those jokers sleep a lot. It’s like you have a little coma victim who wakes up to eat only to fall back to sleep when they are done. We thought parenting was easy, but then week two happened and their crying outweighed their sleeping.
• Sneezing. Babies apparently don’t have nose hairs so they sneeze pretty often. Don’t worry they aren’t getting sick. They just sneeze a lot.
• Rolling their eyes up into their head. My daughter did this more than my son but it freaked us out every time. It’s like they don’t have full control of their eyes and those things roll all around the back of their head.
• Getting out of swaddles. Now the first week they slept so much they did not bust out of their swaddles. Come week two my kids became escape artists and would get out of the most tightly swaddled swaddle.

The truth is that if your kid is like my kids, they won’t bring a lot to the table for the first few weeks. They cost you money, sleep, and will probably cause you to tell your wife “what were we thinking.” Even though they don’t bring a lot to the table you will feel a love for them that you cannot describe. They haven’t done anything to deserve your love but you will love them with all your heart. It reminds me of how God must feel about us. I don’t bring a lot to the table. God doesn’t love me because of anything that I do. He loves me because He’s my father.

1 John 3:1a - “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!”

What else do babies bring to the table?

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