Life

15 Hilariously Honest Parenting Quotes Every First-Timer Should Read

Parenthood is the most beautiful experience in the world, but it’s also the messiest, hardest, most overwhelming time of your life. When my daughter was born, I had a vision in my head of motherhood. Constant attention for my child, homemade baby food, laundry always folded and put away neatly — you see where I’m going with this, right? Parenthood isn’t a perfect and can often be a twisting path that leaves you wondering what in the hell happened. Well, you’re not alone. Thankfully, many other moms and dads have similar feelings and are willing to share them with some hilariously honest parenting quotes.

You want someone to tell you that their baby is a total jerk too, right? And someone to nod in agreement when you say “Are 3-year-olds not the absolute worst things in the world? But also the best?” Parenthood is not for the weak, especially when you’re sleep-deprived, sticky, and haven’t washed your hair in three days. It doesn’t take much to feel like you’re totally alone in the world and that no one else has ever been subjected to a pint-sized dictator that still needs you to wipe their butt. You need a support system that backs you up when you lock yourself in the bathroom to eat a full-sized Snickers bar in .03 seconds. I get it. And so do these 15 parents with their honest and funny quotes on parenting. High five, champ. You’ve got this.

1

Tina Fey

“But now, you’re just like a human napkin for kids, like, they just wipe their face on you and stuff,” the funny lady once told David Letterman. And you know what? It’s true. I don’t even know how my kid gets so sticky and gross, but I find it all over me.

2

Neil Patrick Harris

“Everybody said, ‘You’re going to look into their eyes and you’re never going to feel love burst forth like you feel’... I’m like, not so much,” our favorite NPH told The Talk on meeting his twins for the first time. I want to hug him so hard. I remember thinking there was something wrong with me for being all “Hey… it’s a baby.”

3

Meredith Masony of That’s Inappropriate

“Everyone always says, ‘Don’t be stressed, you’re going to miss this.’ I beg to differ. I’m not going to miss running down the aisle of the grocery store to stop a kid from pulling down boxes of Cheerios. I will not miss public restroom breaks where my kids drop an F-7 sh*t that can scrape paint off the walls,” Meredith Masony writes on her blog, That’s Inappropriate. I get it. I won’t miss teething or my daughter’s constant desire to tongue kiss every electrical outlet she sees.

4

Christina Applegate

“Sometimes I stand there going, ‘I’m not doing any of this right!’ And then I get this big man belch out of her and I go, ‘Ah, we accomplished this together,” the actress told People. It’s weird to think that a baby burping can make you cry tears of joy, but so can a poopy diaper when you were convinced your kid would be constipated until they were 12. Ah, parenthood.

5

Kat Bouska of Mama’s Losin’ It

“The only thing that peeves me about how other people parent their children is how they raise them to be so much more annoying than mine,” Kat Bouska of Mama’s Losin’ It writes. She’s right you know. It’s really the only thing you can judge another parent for.

6

Chris Pratt

During a recent appearance on Conan, Pratt asked the question we’ve all wondering. “You know how kids are great 95 percent of the time, and then five percent of the time, they’re just little a-holes?” Say no more, Chris. YES. We know.

7

Jenni Chiu of Mommy Nani Booboo

“I’d now lick my kid’s face if I had to in order to keep the public from thinking we roll around in our food like animals,” Jenni Chiu writes on  Mommy Nani Booboo. If you haven’t held your kid’s head firmly in place by pushing their forehead against a car seat so you can remove dried mystery gunk off their face with your own saliva, then who are you?

8

Amy Poehler

“When you’re a stay-at-home mother, you have to pretend it’s really boring, but it’s not. It’s enriching and fulfilling, and an amazing experience. And then when you’re a working mother you have to pretend that you feel guilty all day long,” Poehler told Katie Couric for Glamour. She is 100 percent accurate.

9

Nia Vardalos

“Being a mom to me means you have accepted for the next sixteen years of your life, you will have a sticky purse,” Vardalos told People. You think wet wipes are just for diaper changes until your kid hits one and then you’re convinced that wet wipes are the greatest thing to ever be invented.

10

Lauren Hartmann of The Little Things We Do

Lauren talks a lot about motherhood on her lifestyle blog, The Little Things We Do, but nothing resonated more with me than when she wrote a post about how much you’ll cry as a parent. “Watching inspirational videos of parents and children on Youtube gets me every time. Also, you’ll never be able to watch Law & Order SVU ever again.” So true. Goodbye, Elliot and Olivia. I can no longer watch anything happening to a child without becoming a sobbing mess.

11

Chaunie Brusie of Tiny Blue Lines

“I can 100 percent guarantee you that any time I even remotely think about getting up early to do something productive that doesn’t involve watching the news with a baby on my lap, my children will sense it and wake up wailing. It’s a scientific freaking fact,” Chaunie Brusie writes in a confessions blog post at Tiny Blue Lines. This. This is the biggest truth ever. Any time I try to get a head start on the day, my kid will decide that sleeping until seven was SO last week and try to knock my coffee cup over at least a dozen times.

12

Jimmy Fallon

The funny host of The Tonight Show told Parents that one of the most challenging parts of parenthood was putting together all that baby gear. “I broke a sweat assembling some Swiss egg-shaped high chair for Winnie that looked like a piece of art.” Have you ever put together a baby crib without cussing? Yeah, me neither.

13

Louis CK

“If you're a parent you just start making it, because you can't listen to them all the time that they're talking, because they're talking all the time. And they just talk whenever. They don't give a sh*t what you're doing or if it's a good time. I'm in a shootout with the cops and she's telling me all kinds of sh*t. She doesn't care because she's five. They're self absorbed people,” comedian Louis CK says in one of his hilarious stand-up routines. You can choose to listen, but most parents have perfected the art of “Uh huh, honey. That’s so cool,” by the time their kid is three.

14

Poppy of Eeney Meeney Miney Mommy

“Poop becomes part of your daily reality and you just have to make peace with it because, if you freaked out every time you found it smeared on your clothes or touched it accidentally while doing a diaper change, you’d be a total wreck,” Poppy writes at her blog chronicling her life with twins. It’s ridiculous how comfortable you become with poop, parents. You’ll spend so much time talking about it, smelling it, and wiping it that if it were a Jeopardy category, you’d be a star.

15

Kevin Hart

"I hate when new parents ask who the baby looks like. It was born 15 minutes ago, it looks like a potato,” says Kevin Hart, finally speaking what the rest of us are thinking. Can we apply this to ultrasound photos, too? All I saw when looking at my baby’s sonogram was a grainy image shaped like a baby; everyone else saw me. Weirdos.

Images: Courtesy of cookiecrumbkids/Flickr; Giphy (15)