How do you know if you’re ready for kids? And then when you have them, how do you know what to do next?

I’m the dad of two amazing girls, a three year old and a one year old, and every day watching them has the possibility to be the most intensely amazing, amazingly intense days of my life. As a parent you can go from “I can do this forever” to “Someone please help me!” – all before breakfast.

Are you ready for kids? Are you ready to laugh about the kids you have? This ultimate guide to parenthood below will help you do both.

Think You’re Ready For Kids? Take the Test.

1. Stand in the middle of your room with a pile of toys, important papers, shirts, underwear, and throw them all in the air. Then attempt to pick it all up while a volunteer tries to rip it out of your hands and yell erratically like you just told them that cookies no longer exist. Repeat 7-9 times a day.

2. Grab one handful of crackers and one hand full of chocolate. Mash the two together. Throw in the air. Do the Hokey Pokey on top of the mess. Repeat three times a day.

Bonus Test: Make it more interesting by switching out crackers for any berry of your choice.

3. Babies and toddlers are completely content with an activity for 75 seconds. 120 seconds on a good day.

You have 13 hours of wakefulness you need to fill, broken down into two minute intervals, thus leaving you with 390 different activities you need to come up with to keep your toddler busy.

To see if you’re ready for kids,  get three hours of sleep. Don’t eat. Come up with 390 different activities, while someone pulls on your arm and yells in your face. Then refuses to do 357 of your ideas.

Bonus Test: At the end of the day, have your significant other come home and say, “Wow the place is really a mess.”

4. Scour Facebook until you see one of your friends toddlers are sick. Ask to come over and sit in front of the child until he or she sneezes in your face. Hopefully this will get you sick as well. Once sick, ask your friends to leave and now care for the sick child yourself while sick.

Bonus Points: Slip your friends kid a laxative and see if they’ll poop all over the couch. Clean it up.

Double Bonus: Slip them a laxative and take them to urgent care. Wait in the lobby for two hours. Try to keep the child from pooping all over the lobby floor. Go see the doctor. Wait in the room for another 45 minutes as the kid plays a game of “what can I break/poop on.” Have the doctor come in, and give you a whole one minute and fifteen seconds, a completely annoyed one minute fifteen seconds where they let you now with every non-verbal they have in their body that they don’t care at all about you or your child, then have them tell you its a virus and nothing can be done. Be nice to the nurse on the way out.

5. Try to have a conversation with your significant other in the car while two friends sit in the back. One yelling until they begin to lose their voice. The other asking you over the yelling why it’s taking so long to get there–a minimum of 137 times.

Repeat every time you’re in the car for two years.

Bonus Points: Every time you’re stuck in traffic, have your friends increase the decimal level to slightly lower than the sound of a plane taking off.

6. Play a barely audible crying track in every room of your house. Not that your baby will actually cry that much. But even when they aren’t, the Phantom Cries will always be on.

7. Set your alarm to go off every two-three hours. For six months. Have friends ask you how your sex life is going.

Pump the Test Up a Notch – Baby Koala Style

8. To really get the best feel for possible parenthood, you’d now be wise to borrow a baby monkey, baby ostrich, or baby koala from the zoo. Actually, preferably more than one.

Take the baby monkey and koala to your car. Attempt to put a diaper on the koala, laying it on the front seat of your car with the door open and you standing outside, while the monkey plays a game of “how loud can I turn the radio.” Wave down a car and ask them to pull the front of their car into the space you’re standing in, thus blocking all the cars from passing behind.

Bonus points if you can diaper the baby animal before seven cars line up or two cars honk.

9. Have your parents come over to watch the monkey and koala, giving you a well-deserved break.

Fall asleep for seven minutes on the couch. While asleep have your parents feed the monkey and koala juice that is 0% juice, 100% high fructose corn syrup. Yogurt that contains 15 grams of sugar, per 1/4 spoon, and a chocolate chip granola bar.

Then three cookies because they did so well eating their food.

After your parents are done feeding the monkey and koala, have them wake you up abruptly to tell you the monkey has pooped himself and the koala is feeding the dog chocolate, and they forgot they have a lunch appointment across town and need to leave right away.

As you now try to catch the monkey that has sugar cascading through its veins like the Niagara Falls and poop begins to leak out of every corner of the diaper, while the koala begins to cry because the dog has knocked it over, have your parents watch quietly in the background, then right before they leave have them tell you how you should be trying to catch the monkey.

And that you really should be showering more.

Repeat twice a month. Based on your parents schedule.

10. Go to the mall on a Saturday afternoon with your baby koala and monkey. Chase them around a department store and don’t leave until you:

A. Receive 13 dirty stares from fellow mall-goers.

B. Two employees ask you to leave.

C. A baby animal hits its head on the tile floor or metal clothing bar. Twice.

D. A sixty-year-old-plus woman stops you to tell you that you’re doing everything wrong

E. You are actually able to purchase the items you came to buy. (Note: Probably not wise to try and go for E. because you’ll be there until both animals are 15 years old).

11. After leaving the department store and schlepping your way back to the car, start a stopwatch with a two minute countdown. Run back to the mall to find a bathroom before the time runs out.

Bonus Points: If you’re male and are holding a female koala, wait until all the bathroom stalls are full and then try to hold the female koala in a way where she can pee into the urinal, while also keeping the monkey from putting their hands in the “said” urinal. If any piece of clothing or limb enters the urinal, go back to the car and try again.

12. Take your baby koala’s favorite food. Your go-to snack whenever you’re in a bind. Now they’re allergic to it. Don’t give them that food.

13. Successful toddler watching is about containment. Keeping them in a safe place as long as possible that they most likely don’t want to be in.

Set up a large playpen. Put your baby monkey in. Put a banana on the other side of the room next to your glass coffee table and vase your mother gave you. Keep the monkey in the playpen for thirty minutes. It’s like playing Baby Gladiator, except you can’t use force.

14. Try to cook with the baby koala and baby monkey in the kitchen. Right when things get on the stove, pick up the koala and monkey and try to finish the meal holding them both, while keeping their hands away from the stove. Sit them down to eat. Most likely they’ll throw the food you made at you or at each other. Tell them you’re not giving them anything else to eat until they eat their dinner. Keep this up valiantly until they start crying and trying to escape from the table.

Keep them at the table.

Give in and give them both a banana.

Have them throw that in your face.

Then have them ask for it back.

Don’t scream.

Bonus Points: Have your in-law come over, sit down, and feed them successfully with the first spoonful.

15. Get the stomach flu. Take your baby monkey and koala back to the zoo. In a wagon with a wobbly wheel. In the heat. On a Saturday over Labor Day Weekend. Spend the next three hours canjouling, strapping down, bribing with cookies, chasing, throwing up ever so slightly in your mouth, fighting crowds, only to get them back to the zookeeper who said they would watch them for a bit. Have the zookeeper cancel. Run out of diapers. Get them back to the car in less than seven minutes. Get behind an old guy who walks slowly in front of you, blocking your way, then gives you The Look as you pass by.

Don’t flip him off or kick his cane out from under him.

16. Late at night have the baby monkey and koala crawl in your lap, and give you kisses on the cheek while saying out of nowhere, “I love you.” Be overwhelmed once again by the realization that holding, caring, and loving these two baby animals who depend on you for everything is the most fulfilling, profound, difficult, yet rewarding roles you’ve ever played. And you know you’d do anything for them. Even when they’re driving you to the edge of insanity. Hold them tight and say a prayer for them both, and that God would give you the strength and patience to do it better tomorrow. Feel guilty about every negative thought or time you just had enough today.

Take a deep breathe.

Close your eyes.

Have the monkey smack the koala in the face.

Start the craziness over again.

Parents did I miss anything?