When you're indoors, and the baby is on your shoulders, avoid doorways and low-hanging light fixtures.

When the baby has an ear-infection, there's a big difference between "aural" and "oral" medication.

If someone offers to let you hold a baby that was fed in the last twenty minutes, the answer should be "no."

If the baby refuses to eat, scare the bejeezus out of her. When the baby shrieks in terror, you have about 1.5 seconds to get the spoon in her mouth.

They make baby spoons with thermosensitive ends that change color when the temperature is too hot. These are really cool to play with.

When playing poker with friends, don't even think of betting the baby unless you have a king-high flush in a no-wilds game.

According to my wife, babies start to crawl "before you know it" so it makes sense to have the whole house baby-proofed by the end of the second trimester.

No matter who you are, no matter what your gene-pool is, don't brag about how "smart" your infant is. They're all dumb as posts, and will spend hours trying to fit beach-balls in their mouths.

All new fathers consider the idea of adding chocolate syrup to the formula. All mothers forbid this.

If you're using one of those audio-transmitting monitors to listen the baby in another room, be VERY careful what you say out loud in the nursery when your mother-in-law is visiting.

Giving the baby "noogies" is a bad idea until you're sure the skull plates have fused.

Carrying a baby in a shopping mall is a remarkable "chick-magnet" that will often attract a calibre of women that wouldn't normally give you the time of day. Making a few extra bucks renting out the baby to male friends for this purpose will be frowned upon by your wife.

When baby makes of show of emitting various solids, liquids, and gasses from assorted orifices, it's considered "cute." When daddy does this same thing, he's a "disgusting slob." This is a double-standard.

Despite what your wife may tell you, a four-month old baby cannot be "desensitized to violence" by watching "Total Recall" with daddy.

When carrying the baby in a new backpack, don't bend down to pick up something unless you exactly what you're doing. Likewise, don't look up too quickly when a plane flies overhead.

If you're the father, and you have to ask "Is the baby old enough for...", the answer is always "no."

The longer you're unable to find a babysitter, the lower your standards go. Initially, you won't consider a babysitter that hadn't won at least two Nobel Peace prizes. After six months, you'll accept any babysitter that isn't on a first-name basis with her parole officer.

Once a baby is capable of rolling over, there is actually a very sound justification for keeping a modest pile of soft, fluffy, dirty laundry next to the bed.

The combined weight of all the various solids and liquids that come from a baby over the course of a day exceeds the baby's sum weight. Scientists are baffled, but none of them are too keen on researching the subject.

When playing actively with the baby (tossing into the air, turning upside down, bouncing, etc.) make sure you're on your spouse's side of the bed.

The term "burp cloth" does sound better than the more accurate term "barf rag."

Despite their convenience, curtains are not an adequate substitute for a burp cloth.