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And we’re back! Well, we never left. We’re always here for you. And another new episode of Parenting is a Joke is waiting for you with the charismatic Seth Herzog! You see him in sketches with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Showand just know, while he’s there he’s also thinking about his two 5-year-old twins. Has anyone else here planned an important event, hired a babysitter only for them to bail? Now what? If you ever see me do standup and notice my son is sitting on the corner of the stage, playing on his iPad, you’ll know I just couldn’t arrange help.

January 31, 2024

We’re so psyched to have Lucy Huber back this week as a contributor to our Substack so enjoy everyone!

You almost survived January, readers! My baby is about to turn one in two weeks and I’ve been thinking about how I need to confess something: she is extremely easy. This newsletter deals with the struggles of having kids but when I think about Winnie’s last year, it’s hard to think of anything with her that was really that hard. I know. I know! You probably hate me right now. But she taught herself to sleep through the night at one month old (did you even know babies could do that?), eats well, lets anyone hold her with a big smile, plays quietly by herself, and naps easily in her own crib. Of course, she’s not perfect (for instance she cries in the car and doesn’t like raspberries, the best fruit, what the hell is that about?), but taking care of Winnie is kind of like what I thought taking care of a baby would be like if I was really good at taking care of babies. 

Winnie is my second baby, though, so I know it’s nothing I did because my first baby (now a 3-year-old boy) was not easy. He didn’t sleep through the night until he was 2 and a half. He needed constant attention as a baby, you couldn’t just plop him down on a blanket, because he would scream until you interacted with him. He never learned to crawl because he made someone hold his arms up so he could walk until he could walk by himself. He refused to nap in a crib, every single day me or my husband would have to walk him around the neighborhood until he fell asleep in his stroller. For three years. Even his conception was difficult: after over a year of infertility, he was conceived via IVF. My daughter, the easy baby? I got pregnant with her by accident after thinking we couldn’t even have kids naturally. She simply volunteered to exist. 

I’m not telling you this because my 3-year-old is a bad kid. He’s the best! He’s funny and smart and endlessly creative and does now sleep through the night finally so we like him a lot more. And I’m not telling you this to brag about what a good baby my one-year-old is (although she is a very, very good baby). I’m telling you this because one year of having an easy baby taught me something: some people get the easy babies first. It’s not fair! Everyone should be distributed an equally hard baby so nobody gets to sleep through the night for 2 and a half years. Or better yet, an easy baby so we ALL get to sleep. But that’s not how it works.

I had the hard baby first and the problem with that is that I looked around and saw moms who had the easy baby first and compared myself to them. I didn’t know yet that my hard baby was a hard baby, I thought all babies were that hard and everyone else was handling it a million times better than me. I thought I was bad at being a parent. Then I had Winnie and realized I am probably kind of bad at being a parent but not that bad. 

We all get thrown different stuff as parents and no matter what, it’s a hard job. Some parents are dealing with way harder stuff than I’ve had to deal with and some parents get kids that never have an hour-long meltdown because there are only fruit punch juice boxes in the fridge and not grape juice boxes. 

I’d say we are all trying our best, but actually, I’m not always trying my best. I could try a lot harder sometimes. But sometimes I’m just really tired! Sometimes when my son is having a massive tantrum I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling in despair instead of gentle parenting. A mom in my neighborhood moms group recently asked “What kind of cheese has a low salt content for babies” and I realized I’d never even considered that the baby shouldn’t be eating a lot of salt, she’s not even one and yesterday I let her finish a bag of BBQ chips so she’d stop crying in the car. Sometimes I beg my 3-year-old to watch TV even though he doesn’t want to so I can look at my phone in peace for 30 minutes. Ok, fine, 90 minutes! But this past year with my easy baby has taught me that probably a lot of stuff I do doesn’t even matter. Kids are who they are. As long as I’m there for them and try to be a good parent, it probably doesn’t matter that much if I’m doing everything as well as other parents seem to be. They might just have easier kids! Or more money or more childcare or an old witch that lives in their closet and grants them good hair in exchange for pieces of their soul or maybe they are better than me but so what, there are no Parenting Awards!

But for real, though, I really shouldn’t be giving a one-year-old BBQ chips - they’re not even the best flavor, she should at least get Sour Cream and Onion. I will try to do better there. 

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Check out more from Lucy Huber here! Treat your ears to this week’s episode of Parenting is a Joke with Seth Herzog. Coming up I’ll be talking to comedians Adam Cayton Holland about Denver, Hippie Parents and OCD, plus later in the month Mike Feeney, and Rosebud Baker. So much to look forward to.

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