This weekend,  I figured out how you can parent an infant from your bed.*

Here is what you do:

1. Put your feverish ass to bed as soon as your baby goes down for a nap.
2. Wake-up when your baby wakes up.
3.  Listen to them the next wall over but don’t get them yet….
4.  …..wait until they really start to yell.
5.  Get them and then bring them back to your bed. Shut the door.
6.  Put them immediately on the floor as they will attempt to crawl out of bed within 35 seconds of being there.
7. Announce as you put them on your bedroom floor: “Here is your new playground, child! Enjoy!”
8. Watch them while you rest your head on a pillow.
9. They will go directly for any charger cables you may have by your bedside. Cut off the power to the cables. Watch them.
10. Are they putting the cords around their neck? Maybe a little. But it’s okay if it isn’t, you know, a full loop. Keep watching. They will get bored eventually and will crawl over to your bookshelf.
11. There, they will pull every book off the shelf. Do you want to stop them? No, you don’t, because you’re pathetically sick. So, you will let them pull them all into a giant pile. It’s good for them! Books! Literature! You will have the energy to put them all back in exactly 6 days from now.
12. They will find a water bottle / sippy cup from somewhere on your bedroom floor. Let them go to town. They will eventually give up on that and will head to a dog toy which you can agree in your feverish state is gross. But are you really going to get out of bed? No.
13. Numbers 8 -12 will happen a few times. Maybe they will put your discarded bra in their mouth? Maybe you will laugh as much as your sick body will allow?
14. They will eventually poop. Meaning, you really will have to get out of bed.
15. Once they are freshly changed, get your sick ass to the couch downstairs so your husband and son don’t think you’re a total waste of a human being / maternal figure.
16. Eye the couch.
17. Grab the Goldfish from the kitchen. Scatter them around the coffee table and floor (figure that if any get smashed, you can vacuum them up in exactly six days once you have the energy / time to do so).
18. Get on the couch. Watch your baby go on a Goldfish scavenger hunt.
19. Promise yourself you’ll get better about housekeeping … one day. But for now, you have to get through the day.
20. Get through the day.

*For exactly 25 minutes.