Preparation for parenthood is not just a matter of reading books and decorating the nursery. Here are 12 simple tests for expectant parents to take to prepare themselves for the real-life experience of being a mother or father.

1. Women: to prepare for maternity, put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front. Leave it there for 9 months. After 9 months, take out 10% of the beans.

2. Men: to prepare for paternity, go the local drug store, tip the contents of your wallet on the counter, and tell the pharmacist to help himself. Then go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home. Pick up the paper and read it for the last time.

3. Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels, and how they have allowed their children to run riot. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behavior. Enjoy it - it’ll be the last time in your life that you will have all of the answers.

4. To discover how the nights feel, walk around, the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 lbs. At 10pm put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1am. Put the alarm on for 3am. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a drink. Go to bed at 2:45 am. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off. Sing songs in the dark until 4am. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up. Make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years. Look cheerful.

5. Can you stand the mess children make? To find out, smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains. Hide a fish finger behind the stereo and leave it there all summer. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds then rub them on the clean walls. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

6. Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems: first buy an octopus and a string bag. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this - all morning.

7. Take an egg carton. Using a pair of scissors and a can of paint, turn it into an alligator. Now take a toilet tube. Using only scotch tape and a piece of foil, turn it into a Christmas tree. Last, take a milk container, a ping pong ball, and an empty packet of Coco Puffs and make an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower. Congratulations, you have just qualified for a place on the playgroup committee.

8. Forget the Lexus and buy a Mini Van. And don’t think you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that. Buy a chocolate ice cream bar and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there. Get a quarter. Stick it in the cassette player. Take a family-size packet of chocolate cookies. Mash them down the back seats. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car. There!, Perfect!

9. Get ready to go out. Wait outside the toilet for half an hour. Go out the front door. Come in again. Go out. Come back in. Go out again. Walk down the front path. Walk back up it. Walk down it again. Walk very slowly down the road for 5 minutes. Stop to inspect minutely every cigarette butt, piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way. Retrace your steps.Scream that you’ve had as much as you can stand, until the neighbors come out and stare at you. Give up and go back in the house. You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

10. Always repeat everything you say at least five times.

11. Go to your local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child - a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Buy your week’s groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goats eat or destroy. Until you can easily accomplish this do not even contemplate having children.

12. Hollow out a melon. Make a small hole in the side. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side. Now get a bowl of soggy Froot Loops and attempt to spoon it into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane. Continue until half of the Froot Loops are gone. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor. You are now ready to feed a 12-month old baby.

13. Learn the names of every character from Barney and Friends, Sesame Street and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When you find yourself singing “I love you, you love me” at work, now, CONGRATULATIONS! … you finally qualify as a parent.

A father and his son go into the grocery store when they happen upon the condom aisle.

The son asks his father why there are so many different boxes of condoms.

The father replies, ”Well, you see that 3-pack? That’s for when you’re in high school. You have 2 for Friday night and 1 for Saturday night.”

The son then asks his father, ”What’s the 6-pack for?”

The father replies, ”Well, that’s for when you’re in college. You have 2 for Friday night, 2 for Saturday night, and 2 for Sunday morning.”

Then the son asks his father what the 12-pack is for.

The father replies, ”Well, that’s for when you’re married. You have one for January, one for February, one for March, one for…..”

Someone once took a large black ink marker and wrote “Help” on the bottom of the groom’s left shoe and “Me” on the bottom of the right shoe. So when he knelt down for his vows, the entire congregation saw it. Of course, this will only work if he must kneel with back to congregation (i.e. Catholic wedding). Make sure you get it so that it is readable with the shoes side by side, left to right, toes toward the floor. Do this far enough in advance so that the paint is dry before the groom wears the shoes to avoid damaging carpets.Besides “Help Me”, other possible message to write on the soles are (with varying degrees of cruelness): Left Shoe (I’m With) Right Shoe (Stupid [pointing arrowhead]); Left Shoe (Quick, Call 911!) Right Shoe (Never Mind, I’m Doomed!)

You’re getting old when you don’t care where your spouse goes, just as long as you don’t have to go along.

An extraordinarily handsome man decided he had the God-given responsibility to marry the perfect woman so they could produce children beyond comparison.

With that as his mission he began searching for the perfect woman.

After a diligent, but fruitless, search up and down the East coast, he started to head west.

Shortly thereafter he met a farmer who had three stunning, gorgeous daughters that positively took his breath away. So he explained his mission to the farmer, asking for permission to marry one of them.

The farmer simply replied, “They’re all lookin’ to get married, so you came to the right place. Look them over and select the one you want.”

The man dated the first daughter. The next day the farmer asked for the man’s opinion.

“Well” said the man, ” She’s just a weeeeee bit, not that you can hardly notice, but pigeon-toed.”

The farmer nodded and suggested the man date one of the other girls; so the man went out with the second daughter.

The next day, the farmer again asked how things went.

“Well,” the man replied, “She’s just a weeeee bit, not that you can hardly tell, cross-eyed.”

The farmer nodded and suggested he date the third girl to see if things might be better. So he did.

The next morning the man rushed in exclaiming, “She’s perfect, just perfect! She’s the one I want to marry!” So they were wed right away.

Nine Months later the baby was born. When the man visited nursery he was horrified: the baby was the ugliest, most pathetic human you can imagine. He rushed to his father-in-law asking how such a thing could happen considering the parents.

“Well,” explained the farmer, “She was just a weeeee bit, not that you could hardly tell, pregnant when you met her.”

A man placed some flowers on the grave of his departed mother and started back for his car, parked on the cemetery road. His attention was diverted to a man kneeling at a grave.

The man seemed to be praying with profound intensity, and kept repeating, “Why did you die? Why did you die?”

The first man approached him and said, “Sir, I don’t want to interfere with your private grief, but this demonstration of hurt and pain is more than I’ve ever seen before. For whom do you mourn so deeply?

Was it your Child? A parent? Who may I ask, lies in that grave?”

The mourner answered, “My wife’s first husband! … Why did you die? Why did you die?”

The elder priest said, “I know you were reaching out to the young people when you had bucket seats put into replace the first four pews.

“It worked”, said the younger priest, “We got the front of the church filled first.”

The young priest nodded and the old one continued, “And, you told me a little more beat to the music would bring young people back to church, so I supported you when you brought in that rock ‘n roll gospel choir.”

“So”, asked the young priest, “what’s the problem?”

Well,” said the elder priest, “I’m afraid you’ve gone too far with the drive through confessional and the flashing neon sign which reads “Toot ‘n Tell or Go to Hell!!!!”

Mickey Mouse goes to see his lawyer demanding a divorce from Minnie Mouse.

The lawyer reads the divorce papers that Mickey had prepared and says that
the fact that Minnie has large teeth that stick out is not sufficient
grounds for divorce.

Mickey looks up at the lawyer and says “I didn`t say she had large teeth that stick out, I said she was fucking Goofy”

Farmer Jake had a nagging wife who made his life miserable. The only real peace that he got was when he was out in the field plowing.

One day when he was out in the field, Jake’s wife brought his lunch to him. Then she stayed while he quietly ate and berated him with a constant stream of nagging and complaining.

Suddenly, Jake’s old mule kicked up his back legs, striking the wife in the head, and killing her instantly.

At the wake, Jake’s minister noticed that when the women offered their sympathy to Jake he would nod his head up and down, but when the men came up and spoke quietly to him, he would shake his head from side to side.

When the wake was over and all the mourners had left, the minister approached Jake and asked, “Why was it that you nodded your head up and down to all the women and shook your head from side to side to all the men?”

“Well,” Jake replied, “the women all said how nice she looked, and her dress was so pretty, so I agreed by nodding my head up and down. The men all asked, ‘Is that mule for sale?’ and I shook my head, no.”

A man is sitting on his front stoop staring morosely at the ground when his neighbour strolls over.

The neighbour tries to start a conversation several times, but the older man barely responds. Finally, the neighbour asks what the problem is.

“Well,” the man says, “I ran foul of one of those questions women ask. Now I’m in the doghouse.”

“What kind of question?” the neighbour asks.

“My wife asked me if I would still love her when she was old, fat and ugly.”

“That’s easy,” says the neighbour. “You just say, ‘Of course I will’”.

“Yeah,” says the other man, “that’s what I meant to say. But what came out was, ‘Of course I do.’”