Thread by @WheatNOil

How to get two children ready to go out.

A step by step guide.

1) Carefully consider what needs to happen to get the kids ready to go out. Make a conservative estimate of how long that should take. Err on the side of a longer length of time.

2) Whatever length of time you came up with in Step 1, add 30 minutes.

3) Then double it.

4) Then add another 20 minutes.

5) This guide assumes they are already wearing appropriate clothes to go outside. If they are not, add another 30 minutes.

Or, alternatively, give up and despair.

6) Tell your children it’s time to go out.

Have them ignore you.

Get on their level, get their attention, and tell them.

From here on, they will complain about going outside & being outside until it’s time to come inside. At which point they’ll complain about going in.

7) Ask one child to go pee while you go fill up some water bottles. When they say they don’t need to go, get the other child to go first. They will also not need to go.

8) Say it’s a race to say who can go pee first. In the mad dash to the bathroom, one child will be bowled over. As you hug and wipe their tears, the winner of the race will pee, oblivious to the harm they have caused.

9) The hurt child will refuse to go pee. So go ahead to sunscreen.

This will involve tears, frustration, wrestling, and an epic test of patience.

Finally you will find the sunscreen.

10) Rub sunscreen on child 1. Make sure you get the arms, legs, nose, ears, neck and while predicting the direction and speed of their wriggles and dodges.

11) When you misjudge a dodge and get some in their eye, bring them to the washroom to rinse their eye. While you’re there, encourage them to pee. They will refuse.

12) Google whether sunscreen in the eye causes eye damage while you get shoes on one child.

13) When second child insists on doing their shoes by themselves, patiently wait for them to put them on.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

Wait.

14) Wait more.

15) Plan out your summer. Get caught up on your emails. Develop a solution to sustainable clean energy.

16) The shoes are finally on but on the wrong feet. Leave them.

17) The other child has now taken off their shoes. So put those back on.

18) Put hats on the children. Get ready to leave.

19) Realize you never finished getting the water. Go back into the kitchen and get the water bottles.

By the time you return, 4.8 seconds later, both hats will be off.

20) As you get the hats on, realize you never put sunscreen on the second child. Sigh the biggest sigh in the history of sighs. Wrestle the sunscreen on.

21) Realize the sunscreen is expired.

22) Google “can I use expired sunscreen”.

23) Google “how bad is melanoma”

24) By this time, one child has their shoes off and the other has their pants off but their shoes still on, which would appear to defy the laws of physics.

25) Get the new sunscreen, do the world’s most lackluster job putting it on. Put the pants, the shoes, and the hat back on.

Repeat for child 2.

Repeat the hat and shoes for child 1, who got them off while you were with child 2.

26) Finally go outside.

They look adorable. Take a picture.

Immediately one of children will say they have to pee. Strangely, it’s the one that already went pee.

27) Go back in, while the child is going pee, google “does my child have a urinary tract infection?”

28) Get the hats and shoes back on which have for some reason have come off again.

When you pick up the water bottles, one of them is entirely empty. Which explains the pee.

29) Refill the water bottle. Go back outside.

One of the children has to go pee.

This time it’s the one that didn’t go before.

30) Once again, have them go pee, get the hat back on that got taken off, grab sunglasses realizing you’ve forgotten them all this time, the bug spray, the water.

Step out the door.

31) One of them says they’re hungry. Realize you’ve blown past snack time.

32) Despair.

33) Later, when they’re asleep (putting them to sleep is a different guide), scroll through Facebook while drinking, looking at all the pictures of your friends with their kids doing fun, happy outside things.

Consider your failures in life and parenthood.

34) Post the one picture of them outside and caption it “Great day outside with the kids! #ParentLife”

35) Pour another drink and despair.