My wife has been away on a business trip for the past three nights. And for each of the past three nights I’ve had to handle shit. To my boys’ credit, one of those nights it was dog shit.

When you’re expecting a baby, people will joke with or warn you about how messy babies and toddlers are. No matter what you’ve heard or how detailed those stories are, it does not provide an accurate picture of just how much human feces you will be forced to touch.

Firstly, newborn’s poop is very fluid. This opens up a world of opportunities for fecal matter to find it’s way to places other than a diaper, especially if you experience what I dubbed “The Poo Fountain.” (Related: If you see your newborn making his or her “poop face,” don’t rush over and change the diaper right away. The wee one might not be done and your wall could end up looking like a Jackson Pollack painting.)

When your baby reaches toddlerhood, it gets more challenging. You will experience daily poop accidents during potty training. And “accidents” don’t just manifest as dirty undies. Poop will appear in hallways and on furniture and slip from pantlegs at the most inopportune time… not that there’s really an opportune time for a turd to roll out from a pantleg.

Even after your child is technically potty trained, you’re not done. My boys know how and when to use the potty, but what they haven’t mastered is the post-poop cleanup. I knew this was an issue, but really discovered how much of an issue last night when Boone climbed up on my lap and showed off a long brown smear on his leg. The worst part, however — it wasn’t his poop.

Let me preface that, like me, my boys like to watch TV in the nude. Wyatt left mid-show and deposited a monstrous crap in the potty. Apparently, he had trouble getting the toilet paper off the roll (it was stuck), so he just gave a perfunctory wipe with a shred of tissue and returned to the couch to cuddle with his nude brother. They both ended up with so many smears of poop on them, it looked like they were members of the world’s smelliest Indian tribe. And yes, there was also crap on the couch.

If I haven’t made it clear, let me reiterate: You will handle a soul-crippling amount of shit. There’s no way around it, so invest in some gloves if you think it might help (it won’t) and work on controlling your gag reflex (you can’t). Sometimes, when I’m cleaning up a pile, I actually have to go to my happy place. I call it the Island of Purell.

Once you’re baby becomes a toddler, you will never be on time again. Ever. Not an exaggeration. Your friends will simply assume that when you say you’ll be somewhere at 10 a.m. on Monday, it means 10:30 a.m. And that’s if things go well. If not, it means Thursday. You will also learn how to commute to work at speeds that would make a top fuel dragsters look like a Radio Flyer.

And if you think you’re too organized for this to happen, trust me. It applies to pretty much everyone because even militantly anal clock-watchers will experience this often enough to either adapt or go bat-shit insane.

My wife and I used to battle to get the boys through the morning routine — wake up, go potty, dress for school, eat breakfast, get in the car and depart. As my mother-in-law says, it’s not rocket surgery. The problem for us (and other parents) is any number of these steps could and inevitably do take much longer than planned. For example, whether or not Boone decides to spend 15 minutes on the potty remains a wild card.

Why do these seemingly simple steps take so long? Pick any combination of the choices below — and for parents of twins or triplets, multiply it:

• Refusing to eat
• Wanting to be fed by one of us
• Wanting to be held by one of us (rather than letting us get dressed)
• Arguing for why Go Diego Go! should be watched
• Running and/or screaming
• Unhappiness with choice of clothing (even if said child picked it out)
• Unhappiness with the choice of breakfast (even if said child picked it out)
• More running and/or screaming
• Random (and sometimes imagined) injury sustained while running and/or screaming
• Hunting for specific toy that was absently flung across the room the previous night
• Impromptu game of hide-and-seek
• Conversation about whether or not giraffes dance
• Potty accident
• Puking caused by unforeseen illness
• Trying to ride the dog like a Shetland pony
• Simple lollygagging
• Even more running and/or screaming

And adjusting the timeline to start the process earlier doesn’t help. It just gives your child more time to mess around. Toddlers simply have too much to do to adhere to your randomly chosen schedule. Just getting in the car takes 10 minutes unless of course you’ve allotted 10 minutes for it in which case it will take 20 minutes.

This may sound absolutely infuriating, but my wife and I have hit upon a fantastically simple solution: We made peace with being late. We go to bed each night, knowing the next morning will feature us barking instructions and requests at the boys over and over, followed by a mad dash to work. And because of that adjustment, we sleep better and enjoy our mornings more. Sometimes, we even prolong that conversation about dancing giraffes.

That vintage 1976 wool rug that you discovered at the thrift store? Roll it up. That limited edition Army Of Darkness figurine of Ash complete with chainsaw hand? Pack it away. The antique chairs your parents passed down to you in the hopes they would one day be passed onto their grandchildren? That succession stops with you, unless splintered chairs are the new trend.

Childproofing your home protects your kids, but I defy you to find a way to protect your home (or anything else) from your kids. Which is why it’s best if you just stop getting upset about any damage done and maybe, if something needs to be replaced, get the cheap version. It’ll just get damaged again. Trust me.

Let me give you an example. I mentioned we recently purchased a new minivan. We love it. It makes it super easy to haul around two toddlers, a dog and whatever groceries/luggage/jetpack prototypes we may have. And don’t get me started on the sound system. Anyway, we’ve had it for about three months now. I don’t know when the newlywed title of “New Car” officially wears off, but three months is by no means old. After all, it still has that new car smell. Or it did.

Last Thursday as we drove north for the holiday weekend, Wyatt got a tickle in his throat, coughed twice, then projectile vomited a bottle’s worth of milk all over the back of the passenger seat, the inside of the door, the floor mats and his seat. Just to offer a little turning of the knife, he wasn’t even sick. He just coughed too hard and then did an impression of a dairy fountain.

So, just three months after we purchased the minivan, I had to shell out a chunk of change to have the thing detailed. But because I already accepted that everything we have is subject to destruction by the boys, I wasn’t upset. It’s just part of raising a toddler. Or in my case, two incredibly destructive toddlers.

There is simply no way around it — your children will destroy stuff. There are entire blogs dedicated to this truism. So, getting mad about it proves about as useful and worthy as screaming at the moon. And once your tot shoves a peanut butter and jelly sandwich into your new Blu-ray player, if you don’t keep some perspective, you’ll go so stark raving mad and do just that.

If you’re expecting your first child, I’m sure someone has told you in passing that along with welcoming a new life into your house, you will also welcome a horde of germs. We were told when the boys start going to preschool, they pick up colds pretty frequently. It turned out the word “frequently” doesn’t accurately convey exactly how often a child will bring home an illness. And it’s not just colds. Oh, Lord, no.

First, let me tell you this and please understand it is not an exaggeration. Your child will have a runny nose pretty much from age 2 to age 3. I don’t mean off and on. I mean a yearlong runny nose. Perhaps longer. The only variables are how much it runs and the color of the snot.

Second, whatever bug they pick up, you will get it. There’s no avoiding it. They touch everything, they want to share your food — your home will become a Hazmat team’s worst-case scenario. And the frequency thing I mentioned: The illnesses will come on average every month, sometimes more than that. I just got over my third cold/sore throat in six weeks. Now, my wife has it and it’s knocked her out, which brings me to my third and final point…

These illnesses are like nothing you’ve experienced. Somehow, the colds and stomach bugs toddlers pick up hit adults exponentially greater. When your child gets a cold, they will maybe have a restless night and a cough. When you get it, it will be Captain Trips, an end-of-days style plague that will leave you whimpering for help through clogged sinuses and a ravaged throat.

Of all the illnesses my boys have brought home, I only managed to avoid getting one. And that’s because I locked myself in the bedroom with a week’s supply of SpaghettiOs and the complete DVD collection of Spaced. Yes, you should wash your hands often (by the way, another thing they don’t tell you is you’ll wash your hands so much, your skin will literally crack open and bleed… not kidding), but by the time you see your child sneeze, it’s already too late. Washing your hands at that point is just to teach them how to do it. You might also show them how to work the can opener so they can feed you SpaghettiOs when you’re too weak to feed yourself.

I wrote once before that new dads don’t always feel like dads right away. I theorized the shock of suddenly having a screaming baby thrust into the daily routine makes some fathers switch into hunter-gatherer mode. They’ll happily be the affable, endearing dad after they club enough saber tooth tigers to provide meat and pelts for the winter.

It happened to me. It took a long time for me to slow down and realize I needed to emotionally connect with my guys. Soon, my emotional state went from the brutish “I know I love my boys because I’d kill for them” (that misguided hunter-gatherer stuff) to the more zen “I know I love my boys because seeing their faces fills my heart with incredible joy.”

Still, it wasn’t until the 14-16 month mark that I really started feeling like a dad. And now that my boys are 2 years old (2 years and 2 months, actually), it’s fucking awesome. I can actually play trains with them or help them learn how to work the pedals on their tricycles or just run around the house with them screaming like a Panamanian Night Monkey.

The best part is how much they crack me up. Last night, we decided to let the boys watch some TV. Boone wanted Blue’s Clues and Wyatt wanted Elmo’s World. We watched one episode of Blue’s Clues and after the credits rolled, out of nowhere, Wyatt shouted in a Wolfman Jack-style growl, “It’s ELMO TIME!” What the hell? Who taught him that? My wife and I couldn’t speak for a full five minutes because we were laughing so hard.

So, I’m telling you, new dads, it gets better. Way better. Just do your best and once you get through that first year, you’ll feel more like what you expected when you first found out you were going to be a father.

Our boys fuss and cry in high chairs, they fidget in booster seats and when we feed them at their little table, they constantly run around, stopping by the table only to grab food that they then carry around, spilling all over the place. We’ve tried over and over to get them to stay still for just a few minutes like real people to no avail. But the other night, I found out what gets them to sit and eat quietly for the whole meal: Bad Cop.

I’ve said before that, in a moment of extreme stress, you’ll yell at your kid. You won’t be proud of it and whatever you yell at them to stop doing just continues, usually at a higher volume and with more tears. Some of them from you. Bad Cop is different, though.

The other night, as the boys ran around dropping pumpkin ravioli with pesto sauce all over the kitchen, I stood up and barked at them in the deepest, most stern, angry dad voice I could to “Sit down and eat! Your! Dinner!” To be clear, it wasn’t a yell. On the contrary, it turned out to be much more terrifying.

It had the effect of shocking them into silence and neither moved. Wyatt started crying as I put them in their chairs. Boone was so upset, he couldn’t cry. He just gave us extreme pouty lip and wide eyes. Both reached for my wife, looking for the Good Cop to save them, comfort them. And here’s where I took Bad Cop to Worse Cop. I asked my wife to leave us in the kitchen. She finished her dinner in the bedroom, effectively removing their safe haven, so all they had was Worse Cop glaring at them to eat.

And they did. It actually ended up a very pleasant dinner.

No matter how even your keel, there will come a time when your child will need to meet Bad Cop. This forceful figure with an imposing tone or rigid rules, informs your child that the game is over, the boundary is set and dinner is getting cold. The one way Bad Cop is similar to those moments when you lose your marbles and actually yell at your kid, however, is that you’ll feel awful about it. As my boys were reaching for my wife, just looking for a hug, I felt like shit. But, I still drove the point home by asking her to step away.

After the boys went to bed that night, my wife asked how I was. I turned to her and gave her extreme pouty lip.

After my wife and I feed the boys their last bottle for the night, they reach up indicating they want to snuggle on our shoulders. They do this every night. My wife and I sit in silence for a few minutes cuddling with whichever baby we fed. Two nights ago, as I snuggled with Wyatt, he leaned back and looked at me in the darkened nursery. I said, “I love you, Wyatt.” He replied, “I love you,” and put his head back on my shoulder. I reacted the way any grizzly father of rowdy boys would. I cried.

As a father, you’ll know your children love you. They show it with every squeal, reach or laugh. And of course, once they have a grasp of simple pronoun-verb-pronoun phrases, they’ll actually tell you they love you, even if they’re really just parroting what you tell them. I mean, seriously, I could’ve said “Lobster goggles ipecac” and Wyatt probably would’ve repeated at least some of it.

But, every one of those moments will warm the cockles of your manly heart. So, when your child actually does say those words, you’ll be overwhelmed with emotions so far from the hunter-gatherer side of the parent spectrum that you may feel the need to immediately counter it with a Jason Statham movie marathon and perhaps a KFC Double Down.

You’ll also find it isn’t just confined to your baby either. You’ll see other babies in strollers on their way to the park and silently coo at them. You’ll make funny faces at strange infants. You’ll speak gibberish to your neighbor’s newborn. Basically, you’ll show the world your masculinity can and will buckle when confronted with a drooling, poopy tot.

It’s okay. Even though the general public thinks you’re a wimp, your kid will think you’re a hero just for walking in the door. They’ll show you with a squeal, a reach and a laugh.