Between the Smarter Half and me, we have a good six or seven books on the art of handling a baby. This includes the current "in" books like the What to Expect the First Year and Happiest Baby on the Block. There is a market for a book called Miscellaneous Crap About Babies: The Untold Tips.

I'll start:

1. Baby farts are vicious

I'm talking beyond foul smelling; think "oh my God something crawled up his ass and died" and your head will be in the right place. Even better, they will get worse (or so we're told) when the kid gets to solids.

Part of the problem is that when you hold your baby, you will hold him close to you and especially close to your face. This just means it'll reek faster and longer.

2. Your ability to entertain as a parent has close parallels to the number of commercials you remember.

Many parents start with the ideal case: "I'm not letting my kid turn into a TV watching zombie." The problem with this assertion is that most parents themselves are TV watching zombies, complete with large sections of their formative years defined by jingles they heard in commercials.

So when you're staring into the eyes of a crying infant at 2am and you're trying to calm them down... guess what song you're going to remember first? If you answered "a classic childhood song that is sweet and innocent", buzzzzz... wrong. No, you're going to remember some commercial jingle that's easily looped for a good 30 minutes without really getting under your skin.

Everything from "Raise your hand if you're Sure!" to melody-ified "Where's the beef?" will surge back into your head. You'll mix that in with various pop songs where you remember tune but never got the words or simply would feel very awkward singing the words to your kid. ("Let's do it, baby" just doesn't work, no matter what time it is...) For those of you that grew up on video games, made up songs that match the theme song to your favorite Nintendo game will fill hours of repetitious singing to get the kid to sleep.

Is it okay? Are you going to forever damage your kid? I say they'll be fine -- our parents probably sang commercial jingles to us and we seem to be perfectly well adjusted adults.

Well... sufficiently well adjusted.

That's all for now. I gotta go sing some commercial jingles to The Offspring.