The Science of Parenthood Book and Kid Poop

When my son was an infant, we took a road trip to see my in-laws. It’s about a seven-hour drive.  I was prepared with my pump, several pre-filled bottles, baby wipes, diapers, his favorite blanket, and the cutest outfits he owned. He was dressed to impress and utterly adorable.

That is, he looked utterly adorable until he was covered in runny, nasty baby poop. It was everywhere. It’d traveled up his back, down his legs, and onto his car seat. It took an entire box of wipes and a roll of paper towels to clean him up enough to bring him inside a gross gas station bathroom.  It took another roll of paper towels to cover up the cleaned-up-but-now-wet carseat so that he could sit in it for the rest of our trip.

Like this cartoon “When Your Kid Will Poop” from The Science of Parenthood illustrates, kids poop when it’s inconvenient.

I’m sharing The Science of Parenthood Book and Kid Poop today, because this new book is awesome and illustrated with the hilarious cartoons they’re famous for!

Here are some deets:

What’s Science of Parenthood all about?

Science of Parenthood started nearly three years ago as an illustrated humor blog. The creators use fake math and science to “explain” what puzzles parents every day. Things like:

Should you shower today? (um, usually no, in my opinion)

Why does it matter what color the sippy cup is?

Are boogers a food group? 

The book Science of Parenthood: Thoroughly Unscientific Explanations for Utterly Baffling Parenting Situations, is divided into four sections – biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics. It lives in the chasm that exists between the authors’ collective hopes and dreams and expectations of what parenting will be like and the brutal, slap-you-upside-the-head reality of what parenting actually is. They cover pregnancy, birth and the hilarious frustrations that come with early childhood (tantrums, picky eating, diaper blowouts, illness, sleep issues, play dates, toy creep, homework battles and encounters with crazy parents (not you, of course, they mean other parents). And you know what? You don’t even need to be a scientist to “get” it.

They make parents laugh. Reading it, I found myself grinning and nodding my head. The kid that my son wants to be friends with up the street? He’s mean and gross and grabby and while I adore his parents, I um, well. Here, look:

When asked where they got the idea for Science of Parenthood, Norine and Jessica reply:

Our “eureka” moment came when Norine’s son, Fletcher, came home from school talking about one of Newton’s laws of force and motion: An object at rest stays at rest unless acted on by an external force.

Says Norine: “That reminded me of Fletcher with his video games. He’d sit on the couch and play games all day if I didn’t confiscate the iPad. I jotted down, Newton’s First Law of Parenting: A child at rest will remain at rest until you want your iPad back. Later, I posted that on Facebook. It got a good response, so I started posting other parenting observations and giving them a math or science twist, like Sleep Geometry Theorem: A child will always sleep perpendicular to any adult laying next to them. Both of these are fan favorites and two of the very few cartoons we pulled from the blog to include in the book.

I offered to review this book for Norine and Jessica because
1. It’s freaking hilarious.
2. I’ve met them both in person and they’re ah-mazing.
3. They wrote a BOOK!

Here’s a photo from the last time I saw Norine and Jessica this year. Jessica is in the back, and Sarah and I are sniffing around Julie’s baby:

Here’s one that I adore of Norine, dancing at the BlogHer the year before (the one filled with magic and disappointment), bopping on her phone:

Want a copy of this book? I know you do. Get one here:

Find Science of Parenthood on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram.

About The Authors

Norine is the primary writer for Science of Parenthood, the blog, and Science of Parenthood,the book. A longtime freelance magazine writer, Norine’s articles have appeared in just about every women’s magazine you can buy at supermarket checkout as well as on The Huffington Post, Parenting.com, iVillage, Lifescript and Scary Mommy websites. Norine is the co-author of You Know He’s a Keeper…You Know He’s a Loser: Happy Endings and Horror Stories from Real Life Relationships (Perigee), Food Cures (Reader’s Digest) and a contributor to several humor anthologies, including Have Milk, Will Travel: Adventures in Breastfeeding (Demeter Press). She lives with her husband and 9-year-old son in Orlando.

The daughter of famed New Yorker cartoonist Jack Ziegler, Jessica is Science of Parenthood’s co-creator, illustrator, web designer and contributing writer. In her “off hours,” Jessica is the director of social web design for VestorLogic and the writer/illustrator of StoryTots, a series of customizable children’s books. Her writing and illustration have been published on The Huffington Post, Vegas.com, InThePowderRoom.com and in Las Vegas Life and Las Vegas Weekly. Jessica was named a 2014 Humor Voice of the Year by BlogHer/SheKnows Media. She lives with her husband and 11-year-old son in Denver.