Being an adoptive Mum is...

...passing "The Tests." (Author unknown.)  Follow these 14 simple tests before you decide to have children:

Test 1 - Preparation
Women: To prepare for adoption:-
1. Draw on a permanent smile for showing all SWs
2. Go out lots (it’ll be the last time for some months)
3. Write down all those "helpful" comments  from your friends about children, fold carefully and shove up their ****
4. Learn all you can about adoption and frighten yourself
5. Decide it cant really be that bad and get through placement!

Men: To prepare for children:-
1. Go to a local chemist, tip the contents of your wallet onto the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself
2. Go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office
3. Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time

Test 2 - Knowledge
1. Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behaviour
2. Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers

Test 3 - Nights
To discover how the nights will feel:
1. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly
2. At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep
3. Get up at 12pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am
4. Set the alarm for 3am
5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea
6. Go to bed at 2.45am
7. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off
8. Sing songs in the dark until 4am
9. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off
10. Make breakfast
11. Keep this up for 10 years. LOOK CHEERFUL.

Test 4 - Dressing Small Children
1. Buy a live octopus and a string bag
2 Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no arms hang out
Time Allowed: 5 minutes

Test 5 - Cars
1. Forget the Mercedes. Buy a practical 5-door people carrier
2. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there
3. Get a coin. Insert it into the CD player
4. Take a box of chocolate biscuits; mash them into the back seat
5. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car

Test 6 - Going For a Walk
1. Wait
2. Go out the front door
3. Come back in again
4. Go out
5. Come back in again
6. Go out again
7. Walk down the front path
8. Walk back up it
9. Walk down it again
10. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes
11. Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least 6 questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way
12. Retrace your steps
13. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you
14. Give up and go back into the house

Test 7
1. Repeat everything you say at least 5 times
2. Repeat everything you say at least 5 times
3. Repeat everything you say at least 5 times
4. Repeat everything you say at least 5 times
5. Repeat everything you say at least 5 times

Test 8 - Grocery Shopping
1. Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child - a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat
2. Buy your weekly groceries without letting the goat(s) out of your sight
3. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys

Test 9 - Feeding a 1 year-old
1. Hollow out a melon
2. Make a small hole in the side
3. Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it side to side
4. Now get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane
5. Continue until half the cornflakes are gone
6. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor

Test 10 - TV
1. Learn the names of every character from the Night garden, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney
2. Watch nothing else on television for at least 5 years

Test 11 - Mess
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out:
1. Smear jam butter onto the sofa and yoghurt onto the curtains
2. Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer
3. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds and then rub them on clean walls. Cover the stains with crayon
4. Empty every drawer / cupboard / storage box in your house onto the floor & leave it there. How does that look?

Test 12 - Long Trips with Toddlers
1. Make a recording of someone shouting 'Mummy' repeatedly. Important Notes: No more than a 4 second delay between each Mummy. Include occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet
2. Play this tape in your car, everywhere you go for the next 4 years

Test 13 - Conversations
1. Start talking to an adult of your choice
2. Have someone else continually tug on your shirt hem or shirt sleeve while playing the Mummy tape listed above

Test 14 - Getting ready for work
1. Pick a day on which you have an important meeting
2. Put on your finest work attire
3. Take a cup of cream and put 1 cup of lemon juice in it
4. Stir
5. Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt
6. Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture
7. Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel
8. Do not change (you have no time)
9. Go directly to work

Congratulations, you are now ready to have children. ENJOY!!