You Know You're A Parent of Small Kids When…

• You apologize for the 'disastrous' states of your car, house, and lawn so often that it's now second nature when greeting someone; “Oh, hi – so nice to meet you. Oh, don’t mind our [car/house/lawn], it’s a TOTAL disaster. So, you’re Dylan’s mom?”

• You actually look forward to business trips simply to have a bed to yourself.

• You routinely use references from kids' shows in real life, such as; "God, that guy is a real Doofenshmirtz."

• You currently have a supply of Cheerios, fruit leathers, granola bars and/or other snacks stashed in your car, purse, backpack, etc. (either new, still in the package, and ready to go and/or half-chewed and simply scattered about the floorboards, armrests, purse bottom, etc. gathering a sweet collection of hair, lint, and dust).

• You consider six straight hours of sleep a "pretty good night's rest".

• You reminisce about things like 'reading', 'sitting through a whole meal', 'sleeping in', 'hobbies', 'movies', 'hiking', 'sex', etc.

• You actually check out other parents not to see if they’re hot or not, but to see what brand stroller, carrier, etc they use (and, even more sadly, get excited when you meet some one using the same stuff).

• While once heinous and repulsive, the concept of cleaning up someone else's puke or shit is now really no big deal – at all.

• You know the ages of babies just by looking at them; "So, he's about 18-months then, yes?"

• You've developed both a distain of – and yet respect for – workers in China that package children's toys in the hundreds of tiny rubber bands, twist ties, shrink wrap, string and zip ties that they now come all bundled in.

• You are now expert at identifying food within feces; "Look dear, Sam really did eat that entire pint of blueberries yesterday!," or, "So that's what reconstituted raisins look like…"

• You have tired eyes, weary bones, a couple of extra pounds, a fuzzy mind - and a full heart.
• And... you are so tired, weary, chubby and fuzzy that you’re occasionally prone to wistful bits of cheesy prose (see above).