5 Ninja Skills Moms Need

I'm sure there are some parents who aren't ninjas. Maybe people with nannies. I didn't start out a ninja, but necessity has molded me into one. Let me tell you, Chuck Norris has got nothin' on moms. Here are some of my ninja skills and their most common applications.


1. Patience, young grasshopper.
     "Redirecting" is one of those parenting buzz words. If your baby is doing something he shouldn't be, gently redirect the behavior. This means picking him up from the trash can/dog food bowl/electrical outlet/edge of the stairwell and engaging him in an acceptable non-life-threatening activity one million times a day. Non-life-threatening activities are to a baby what watching a golf tournament on TV is to me, or a baby-less person's version of listening to a couple rave about their little one's potty-training "journey". BORING! So you redirect again. And again. And again patiently.
     You think you're patient? Try spending 90 minutes putting a baby down for a half hour nap. Not for the faint of heart. This is what nap time entails at my house: Read a story, feed baby, rock to sleep with a lullaby. Attempt to set baby down in crib. As soon as you begin to lower the baby down cue blood-curdling screams. Pick baby up, calm him down, try again. Let him scream a little longer. Eventually you get him to go down with only mild wailing, gently rub his back until the wail fades to a moan, and the moan becomes peaceful sleep breathing. Remember all the while you need to be calm and loving despite the hurricane of frustration, anger, guilt, sadness, and need-for-a-strong-drink-ness wildly swirling inside you. Then try to leave the room.

Eating the mail. Time to redirect.

2. Stealth Mode.
     If you are not a ninja your baby will never sleep. After using ninja patience to get the child to sleep, one may want to capitalize on the upcoming 30-75 minutes of "you time", but to do so, one must get out of the baby's room. In my house I'm pretty sure the floorboards in the doorway of Holden's bedroom are made of rusty tin because those mother-Fers are some creaky sons of Bs. You know in Mission Impossible when Tom Cruise is lowered into the room with all the lasers? That's pretty much how I have to exit the bedroom. I backflip into the air, then silently land across the doorway into a somersault I do down the hallway. If I fail to execute this perfectly, the baby will wake up EVERY TIME I approach his doorway. He goes from snoring with his back toward me to upright and screaming in a nanosecond. If I am a ninja, the baby is a samurai.

Sharing a loving moment. 

3. Super-human strength.
     Babies expect you to carry them around everywhere. Whenever you think you've developed the necessary muscle to carry your dense sack of potatoes offspring, they gain another pound and get wigglier.
Also, there's giving birth. (I had a c-section so deduct 10 ninja points.) Ninjas wish they could do something as badass as childbirth.

4. Multitasking.
     If you think twirling nunchucks while roundhouse kicking 5 guys in the face takes focus and agility, try doing anything while caring for an infant. Take any basic task you do every day and tag keep baby from killing itself to the end of it. Here's an example: Today I need to brush my teeth and keep baby from killing itself. Instantly in addition to brushing my teeth I'm holding a cabinet shut with one foot, keeping the toilet bowl closed with my spare hand, using my elbow to hold the door open so the baby doesn't slam his fingers in it again and with a mouth full of toothpaste I'm singing a silly song that I've just made up in the moment in attempts to pacify the baby who's getting pissed that I'm a roadblock to so many life-threatening-situations.

"Let me out of here! I see a life-threatening situation I need to get all up in!"

5. Ability to handle solitude... it's a lonely life.
    You don't see ninjas out at clubs surrounded by friends while guys line up hoping to buy them a drink. Well, the same is typically true of moms. I've been invited to one party since I became pregnant, and it was my birthday. I wasn't always a social outcast. In fact I believe at one time I may have been notoriously fun. Now the few friends who stuck around no longer bother asking me to do anything because they know I'm at home working on my ninja craft. Wax on, wax off.