Last night as I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep, Little R started to kick. Bedtime tends to be Little R’s most active time, so that wasn’t really much of a surprise, but the reaction it triggered was.

With each little kick I began to get more and more worried. My mind started to flood with all the fears and anxieties over being pregnant and becoming a mom. I started worrying about all the little things, the preparations we still must make, whether we can really do this, etc. Before I knew it, I had dissolved into a puddle of tears, entirely overwhelmed by the enormity of what those little kicks meant.

Luckily, my husband was lying there beside me and was able to reassure me that we can, in fact, do this. That it might be tough, but we will be ok. Once I was over the emotional waterfall, we moved on to talking about the lighter side of parenthood.

We started reminiscing about all those things our parents have said over and over through the years and laughing about the fact that our own little baby will probably be joking about all the silly things that we will say to them someday. We talked about all those things that we hope we never catch ourselves saying, and the things that we know are inevitable. We know we will come up with our own catch-phrases as well, but we are pretty sure that a few from our childhoods have stuck. Like these ones:

“Life’s an education, and you just paid tuition.” (This is said whenever a mistake in life ends up costing money)

“That guy should have left ten minutes earlier.” (In reference to people driving to fast)

“I’m not happy.” (Self-explanatory)

“You’re a rude, crude, nude, dude.” (Said while chasing the naked youngster round the dining room table)

“I brought you into this world, I can take you out.” (Used when the slightly older and less impressionable youngster makes a particularly poor decision)

“You can’t always get what you want.” (Self-explanatory, sang to the tune of the popular song with the same lyrics)

These are all things that one of us heard countless times throughout our childhoods, things that are so ingrained that we will almost certainly repeat. I really do wonder if our youngster, 20 years from now, will find themselves saying the same things and shaking their heads in disbelief.