We all live lives that revolve around establishing patterns—personal routines, social constants, a biological preference for an overall lack of change. But do you know who doesn’t really care in the slightest about patterns, routines, constants, or change? The Baby. Personally, I’m not even sure that The Baby thinks of it in those terms. A thought exercise: The Baby, after going down for a nap at the same time (10am) and sleeping for about the same length of time (90 minutes) for, say, three days in a row, on the fourth day, instead, sleeps for only 50 minutes. And that’s it. They wake up, with 40 minutes still to go, and no amount of soothing or pacifier reinserting can change the fact that they’re just—awake. No rationale, no because. It doesn’t have to do with the noise you think you might have made, or with the amount of food eaten at breakfast, or the fact that the blinds aren’t quite closed all the way. While you might have a spiritual connection with your morning cup of coffee, the bench you sit on during your lunch break, the cocktail you drink when you get home from work, The Baby is ready and willing to face life in a new way potentially every day, every hour, every minute. You’ll do yourself a huge favor by ending your quest to ascertain anything deeper.

Imagine if you were expected to establish one set of rules and expectations that governed every aspect of your day—and never stray?

Dispatches From The Baby’s Room are paragraph-long tips on how to maybe make the act of raising a child easier. Or maybe just slightly less insane. Or, in twenty years from now, a guide on how to mess a kid up real good. DFTBR are easily digestible, hand-held, and best of all, free. They are the things Joe Stracci thinks about while putting all of the Mega Bloks back in the bag, making the sound the duck makes, and changing diapers in the dark.