Joining the club...

Is there some kind of secret mom handshake?

I feel like there is and I just haven't been clued in yet because I'm still waiting to become a mom. I'm still learning and have yet to put my skills into practice.

We don't have much baby stuff in the house yet...a beautiful baby blanket knitted by my mother-in-law and some kids' books and that's about it. I bought myself What to Expect the First Year a while back. Started reading it and found it to be pretty dry stuff. I realized that it will likely be very useful as a reference book when something comes up, but that I am unlikely to read it through cover to cover.

So then I recently found The Must Have Mom Manual: Two Mothers, Two Perspectives, One Book That Tells You Everything You Need to Know. The bits that I've read so far - pretty great. Very anecdotal, informative, gritty, at times a bit earthy and also entertaining. The two authors - Sara Ellington and Stephanie Triplett are quite candid in their opinions - one is firmly in the "breastfeeding is great" camp while the other had so many problems with it she said "screw it" and opted to exclusively bottle feed AND didn't let anyone give her any crap about not breastfeeding. The authors cover everything from breastfeeding to accepting help when you're feeling overwhelmed to leaving your career to returning to your career to potty training to discipline to finding play groups to surviving the holidays. I have the feeling that I'm going to learn a lot about being a mom by reading this book. This one I'll read cover to cover.

Maybe when I'm done learning all of this stuff they'll even let me into the club.

Now if I could just find someone to teach me the secret handshake...