Nobody Likes Kale Chips And Other Truths New Moms Need To Know

Half of the footage in today’s singing competitions is of wannabes whose friends never had the guts to tell them they couldn’t sing. Casual onlookers begin to wonder whether those contestants have any friends at all, or if they’re simply surrounded by sycophants who allow such cringe-worthy spectacles to persist.

That’s where I come in. Here are seven pieces of advice that no one else has the guts to tell you to your face, but everyone is thinking it:

1. Cut Your Baby’s Mullet

Listen, there is nothing sacred about your child’s first haircut. Taking scissors to his mane will not start a chain reaction toward puberty wherein he grows a faint mustache and starts studying for the SAT. Chop that rat tail. Please, we’re all begging you. It’s gross and we’re starting to feel guilty for surreptitiously mocking poor Baby Ray Cyrus.

2. It’s a Pyramid Scheme

That themed party you are hosting for essential oils, edible candles, permanent nail varnish, and/or magic face cream that will trick your body out of producing melanin? It’s a pyramid scheme. Buy those products if you like them, but don’t turn every playdate into a sales pitch, and most certainly do not expect us to start peddling that crap too. As a courtesy, we lost $400 investing in an unnecessary and extravagant can-opener at your Pamperberry Chef-erware party. We don’t want to lose our entire social circle by selling it as well.

3. She Doesn’t Want to Babysit

That childless woman with a stressful full-time job? Don’t ask her to spend her precious Saturday making Play-Doh animals with your obnoxious kindergartener. She has just clocked 40 hours in a Dunder-Mifflin-esque cubicle and would rather spend the weekend relaxing with her boyfriend, binge watching Netflix, or drumming up a “10 Most Superficial Egomaniacs of The Real Housewives of Orange County” cast list (spoiler alert: it’s all of them). That is her prerogative.

After all, she is not the one who signed up for the snot-wiping fecal hurricane that is motherhood. Stick with babysitting swaps among mom friends. Chances are your little buggers will entertain their little buggers long enough to give them peace from the perpetual chorus of “Mom. Mom. Mommy. Mom. Look at me. Mom. Mom. Mommy. Mom…!”

4. Get a Hobby

If you spend your time stirring up mommy wars about the dangers of peeling your children’s carrots from the stem down, the superiority of fermenting artisanal pickles, and/or the horror of putting your baby to sleep when the clock ends in 7, you are bored. Get a hobby. You’ll care a lot less about how other parents prepare root vegetables if you have interests outside of child-rearing—like ballroom dancing or pelvic-floor jazzercise.

5. Nobody Likes Kale Chips

When you bring them to playgroup, we feel like you are snack-shaming us. Kale is the Charles Dickens of plants: Pretentious people try to convince themselves they love it, but deep down they know it is boring and cumbersome. And kale chips?! When a food’s main appeal is that it is pretending to be another food, it is a telltale sign that it sucks. You may be super committed to your organic-gluten-free-raw-vegan-caveman lifestyle to the point where you pre-chew your son’s food and spit it into his mouth like a momma bird, but the rest of us would rather share a warm milkshake with a tuberculosis patient than consume kale chips.

6. Your Baby Is 2½

He is not 29-months-old. Don’t make us do the math. We’re using all the mental energy we have to write mediocre blog posts about cutting baby mullets. We thought we left long division back in the sixth grade, right next to our stirrup leggings and headgear. We don’t remember how old our second child is at any given point, so we sure as shooting won’t remember your kid’s age. When we asked his age, we were just making conversation. Which brings me to my last point…

7. They’re Just Making Conversation

You know that Dunder-Mifflin employee at book club who asked if you have any names picked out for your baby? She was just making conversation. Stop getting all outrage-happy about her harmless (albeit cliché) questions. She doesn’t actually care about the fetus you are gestating. She is just being polite, and will forget your answer within the first fifteen minutes of her Netflix marathon.

Now, go trim Achy Breaky’s bad mistakey, put away your edible candle catalog, and practice your cha-cha. Your friends will thank you.