The first one may seem obvious -- infants are not very good at standing on one leg. It’s not easy trying to dress a 20-pound, 10-month bucking baby. The knees buckle, preventing proper pant-raising, and, if by some miracle, you make it past the locked elbows and manage to stuff the right arms into the corresponding holes in the shirt, the tiny fingers will lock and make fishing the hands through the sleeves almost impossible. The trick is to not break the fingers. Breaking fingers = bad parent.

On Monday morning, I walked into CC’s room, ready to fight the “you can’t go to daycare naked, so let me put clothes on you” battle. CC was calmly holding herself up, slapping at some books on a shelf. I saw an opportunity, and I went with it. I lifted her foot to slip on some pants, she let go of the window sill in surprise, pulled up the other leg (the one that had been holding her up -- she still hasn’t figured out that there are two of them), and fell over, hitting her head on the wall. There was crying.

Another thing I learned: Three-year-olds think wearing a crown made out of construction paper makes you ruler of the world. Last week it was a cape. This week, it’s a freakin’ paper crown. I don’t know how long this phase will last, but the red paper is starting to disintegrate. The tips of the crown are bent, and there are watermarks from the rain. There are so many rips in it that the only structural integrity comes from multiple applications of masking tape.

Little Man has his classmates running propaganda for him, and even the teachers call him "the king." Who knew a paper hat could have so much power? We went out to eat last night, and another toddler stopped, staring wide-eyed at Little Man and his royal accessory. “Did you make your crown?” she asked. “Yes,” he said, (a lie) and then ignored the looks of awe. (I totally made that crown.) Last time I checked, kings didn’t need to wear diapers to bed. We can’t pry that thing off his head. He even sleeps in it.

Then I went to the gym, where I learned that I’m a slacker. I made the mistake of telling the instructor I thought I was ready to increase my weights, and wanted to know how to do it. The conversation went like this:

Instructor: “What’s your warm-up weight?”
Me: “Five pounds.”
Instructor: “Five pounds? That’s it?”
Me: “Uh. Yeah.” Isn’t that why it’s called “warm-up” and not “get tired?"
Instructor, shaking her head in disbelief: “You should be using at least double that. How much weight are you using on the bar for squats?”
Me: “I just went up to twenty pounds.”
Instructor: “Each side?”
Me (wishing I’d never started this conversation): “Total.”

The look that she gave me made it clear that she found it difficult to keep her composure while being saddled with such an amateur. She sent me to go get more plates for my bar, and I learned two other things during that class: I could pretty easily double the amount of weight I was doing (even though I didn’t like proving the instructor right) and, I don’t like lifting heavy things.

I wonder what I’ll learn next week.

Laura appears Mondays on TriangleMom2Mom.