Facebook may be the modern photo album where babies are always smiling, toddlers are spill-free and teenagers aren’t too cool to pose with their parents in every picture, but Twitter is the home for the all of the moments captured in between. One glance at a parent’s Twitter timeline and you’ll learn about the spit-up or headbutt that landed the moment after a Facebook photo was taken.
As the home of things parents don’t usually say out loud because there’s nobody old enough nearby to understand or because it’s just too honest, Twitter is a never-ending spring of parenting humor. Every mom and dad should spend a few moments a day reading parenting tweets if only to realize they aren’t alone in the blind chaos of parenthood.
If you aren’t already using Twitter or know how it works, Kate Hall of Hall of Tweets and Norine Dworkin-McDaniel and Jessica Ziegler of Science of Parenthood are making it easy for you. They just released a book called The Big Book of Parenting Tweets that features more than 300 hilarious parenting tweets, many of which have been illustrated for the book.
In full disclosure, some of my own tweets I send from @ParentNormal are included in the book, but so are so many others that you’ll recognize as frequent voices on HuffPost Parents’ and NickMom’s weekly list of funniest parenting tweets, among many other top parenting twitter lists.
If you want to buy the book, it’s available now on Amazon. Here’s 10 reasons from the book you should read parenting tweets:
Imagine having kids… Wrong, you don’t have time to imagine anymore.
— Simon Holland (@simoncholland) September 18, 2014
The baby said “Hot Mama” 10 times in a row. She was talking about her oatmeal, but I’ll take whatever I can get.
— OneFunnyMummy (@OneFunnyMummy) August 7, 2014
3yo: *singing in the bathroom* I have to go poopoo. The poopoo is coming out. And it’s okay to touch the poo- Me: *sprints into bathroom*
— Father With Twins (@FatherWithTwins) August 31, 2013
How to calm a crying baby: 1. Pick it up. 2. Ok, so when it turns like 5 you can put it back down. Good luck.
— Lurk @ Home Mom (@LurkAtHomeMom) July 2, 2014
Parenthood is simply an increasingly ridiculous escalation of threats until you’ve taken away the possibility of having a pet llama.
— Kalvin (@KalvinMacleod) July 22, 2014
She took 4 y/o to the park & texted “Can I get her ice-cream?” Get her a heineken for all I care. Free babysitters get to call the shots.
— Bunmi Laditan (@BunmiLaditan) August 3, 2014
Yesterday I cleaned my house, which is dumb because we still live here.
— Amy Flory (@FunnyIsFamily) June 27, 2013
I wish bottles of ibuprofen came with a little prize inside, like maybe a babysitter.
— Suburban Snapshots (@SuburbanSnaps) July 17, 2014
Reasons my 2-year-old threw a fit today: 1) I woke her up. 2) Her socks felt funny. 3) Her balloon was too floaty.
— Exploding Unicorn (@XplodingUnicorn) July 21, 2014
Cutting a baby’s fingernails is like cutting the red, yellow and green wires on a bomb, hoping each clip doesn’t set off an explosion.
— The ParentNormal (@ParentNormal) September 17, 2014