While I’ve certainly become more experienced in the ways of fatherhood, these 21 immutable laws of fatherhood remain unchanged.

Prior to becoming a father, I had little to no experience with babies. In fact, aside from holding my nephew a couple of times when he was an infant and briefly (and nervously) holding the children of a few friends, I had absolutely no experience with anything baby-related. I couldn’t have been more of a rookie. Along the way, I’ve gathered some pearls of wisdom I’d like to share. Think of this as a roadmap for the unwashed masses of Dads out there who suddenly find themselves in a fourth and long situation, on the road, in the playoffs, and with a gimpy quarterback. I offer these 21 tips to those who, like me, are learning fatherhood on the fly. I categorize these tips as things I wish someone had told me.

1. Your crotch has a bull’s-eye on it – a big, red one. One that your child can find blindfolded, in the dark, and with all the pinpoint accuracy you’d expect from today’s most technologically advanced weapons guidance systems. Everything—and I mean everything from hands, feet, sippie cups, remote controls, toys or anything your child can pick up—will eventually be driven into your crotch. You will find that you can sing tenor, and maybe a little alto, even if you generally sound like Barry White. Whether you plan on procreating in the future or not, it is your child’s mission to turn you into a one-hit-wonder. Cover up now. Stay that way…until they grow up and leave the house.

2. Sippie cups are dangerous projectile weapons. Your child might not be able to toss a ball more than a couple of feet in a planned direction, but your child can hit you upside the head (or below the belt—see point #1) with a full sippie cup from anywhere in the house. Think Crocodile Dundee here. Giving a child a sippie cup in the backseat of your car is a little like having John Wilkes Booth sitting behind you in a theater. Think about it.

3. Bodily noises are funny. Yours. Theirs. It doesn’t matter. Make plenty of bodily noises and your child will love you for it. And you’ll feel better.

4. When dressing your child for any occasion, fewer snaps are always better. Much to the chagrin of fathers everywhere, many infant clothes are more like puzzles than actual clothing. I’ve seen Chinese Origami that wasn’t this confusing. Take my word on this. If the outfit you are considering putting on your child has more than three snaps, toss it back into the drawer. If it uses buttons instead of snaps, throw it into the trash. At two in the morning, you’ll be lucky to get those three little snaps snapped when your child is screaming full tilt, kicking and spinning her little head around on her shoulders. The whole event will end in tears – yours – if the sleeper uses buttons. Why no one has invented glow-in-the-dark, color-coded snaps for infant clothing is beyond me. Then again, so is the industry-wide resistance to using Velcro on baby clothes. Obviously, men aren’t in influential positions at baby clothing companies. Were that to be true, all baby clothing would be monochromatic, would use no fold and snap leg closures and would be easily secured in place with Velcro or duct tape.

5. If you have a dog, then you can skip this point. If you don’t have a dog, get one. Dogs are built-in entertainment devices for your child. Dogs are funny. Even if your dog is a lazy one that only moves to eat and lick its crotch, your dog will amuse the bejesus out of your child. Just be sure to be on the look out for those times when your child thinks it’s funny to try to brush the dog’s teeth, make him wear sunglasses or make him sit on a potty seat. Your dog might or might not be amused.

6. When preparing to feed your child, you should consider any clothes you are wearing and any outfit they are wearing to be immediately trashed. That means you should either change your clothes before feeding your child or get a nice rain slicker. This also means that you should have a spare outfit on hand for your child to wear after you feed her. Don’t think for a second that your child’s bib will save the day. It won’t. It will take some of the abuse, but unless you drape a rain poncho over your child before they eat, they will find a way to mash pureed peas and carrots into their clothes and hair. Also, be wary of formula sodden bibs and burp cloths. Side note: always wash formula-soaked bibs and clothing right away. Fresh formula smells like rotten milk. Rotten formula smells like your, uh, well, you get the point.

7. When getting yourself and your child dressed in the morning, dress your child first, then yourself. This is very important. If you dress first, your child will, without exception, take the opportunity to spit up on you, leak a diaper on you or wad your nicely pressed dress shirt into a network of little baby fist-sized wrinkles.

8. When changing your child’s diaper, it is imperative that you do several things. Pay close attention here. The life I save will be yours. First, open diapers slowly and only when the child is laying on her back and somewhat restrained. Evil lurks inside that little diaper. Next, always, always, always, put some sort of absorbent and disposable surface under your child before you open the diaper (particularly if you are forced to change your child in your lap or in a vehicle). A new diaper works very well. Next, always make sure your child’s shirt and pants are well away from the action before you peel open the diaper. Lastly, master the hog-tie and roll technique when changing a dirty diaper. To perform this maneuver, use one hand to grasp and lift both legs and one arm (much like you’d hog-tie a steer) and roll the child’s bottom toward your child’s free hand. This does two things. One, it restrains both legs and one hand. Secondly, the rolling technique rolls the child onto her shoulder enough to prevent her from reaching into the dirty diaper with her free hand. Work quickly now. Much like a hog-tied and annoyed steer, your child won’t stay still for long. You have a limited window of opportunity here to successfully change and dispose the soiled diaper before your child has one or both hands in the mix. Go with God.

9. In regard to point #8, you might have seen parents check diapers by wriggling a finger inside the diaper. Don’t do this. Most of the time, this is an acceptable method for determining whether your child is wet. However—and this is a known certainty—if you use this method for any period of time, you will encounter surprise substances that are best-left un-probed.

10. A garden hose is a perfectly viable and acceptable dirty diaper cleanup tool. While most dirty diaper cleanups require only a few baby wipes and nerves of steel, others will require some additional firepower to clean up—especially those involving waste spills in high chairs, baby swings, and other baby apparatus. Laugh now, but there will be a time when you find yourself at 2 a.m. with a poop-covered child, looking at an equally sodden high chair or swing, and holding a tiny baby wipe, realizing that you are outmatched. The garden hose is a man’s friend. Lean on it in hard times.

11. Going to the bathroom – especially those longer trips—is a private experience for most men. It’s a time during which we collect our thoughts, think about sports and catch up on our reading. Once you have a child who is self-mobile, those days of bathroom solace and reflection are a thing of the past. It’s now a party in the bathroom every time you go (especially, if you are a single father). Get over your modesty now. Be ready to sing songs, have a child in your lap and still try to finish the business at hand. This one takes some skill, but you’re up to the task. Buck up.

12. Baby swings are gifts from heaven. If you don’t have one, get one. Today. Now. Go. Stockpile batteries and change them frequently. Rejoice.

13. If you have ivory or white carpets, accept your fate now. Soon, it will be an overall dishwater gray, complete with sippie cup drip spots. Don’t believe it when they tell you sippie cups are drip-proof. That goes in the same category with wrinkle-free Dockers actually being wrinkle-free. It’s a myth. Just like the Sasquatch. Get over it.

14. When your child is teething, you will not sleep. Plan it. Nap accordingly. Your only hope is Infant’s Tylenol. Buy it by the bucket. Use it. Take some yourself. Pray.

15. Keep your old cell phones, beepers and remote controls. Your toddler will love them. Just make sure the cell phones don’t actually work. The other day, I heard my two-year-old having a conversation on my old cell phone that sounded an awful lot like Chinese. Mandarin if I had to guess. I’m wondering whether I should be expecting a large cell bill?

16. Resign yourself to evenings full of Teletubbies, Elmo and Barney and other assorted programming. Break down, go to Target, and arm yourself with plenty of children’s DVDs. Plan on knowing every DVD by heart. Prepare yourself for humming Elmo’s World at the water cooler. Get a grip when you realize you’re talking about yourself in the third person like Elmo does…“And now, Daddy is going to change your diaper. Yes, that’s what Daddy is going to do.” And know you’re not the only adult out there who’s losing his grip on sanity.

17. Before leaving the house in the morning, visually inspect your clothing for bits of food, dried tear stains and other unidentified smears. Typical locations include your shoulders, backs or your sleeves and around the collars. Your co-workers will not tell you that you have squash stains on your shirts. They’re evil that way.

18. Once you have a child, you will find yourself part of an entirely new clique at work. No longer are you the outcast when your co-workers start swapping diaper-from-hell stories. No longer will you think these people have lost their minds. Sooner or later, you will discover that you’ve lost yours, too. Sooner or later, you will tell a diaper-from-hell story. Sooner or later, you will be welcomed to the fold.

19. Be prepared to do the same things, over and over again. If you talk in a silly voice, make up a goofy game to get your child to eat, sing a happy song, then be prepared to do it until it ceases to have any meaning. Be ready for command performances, encores, and middle-of-the-night performances. You’re in the big leagues now. Side note: Interestingly enough, if you have pets and you speak to your pets in a different voice, you will find that you speak to your child in the same, silly voice. Go figure.

20. If you followed Point #5 about getting a dog, be prepared for all the extra maintenance that comes with having a dog and a child in the same house. For instance, your child will quickly learn the aesthetic properties of throwing food from a high chair on the floor to watch your dog lap it up. Your child will chase your dog with toy sweepers and shopping carts. Your child will discover that your dog goes potty, too. Enough said.

21. Whether you are a single father or part of a wonderful relationship with a mother in the same household, you can do this. Whether you have any prior experience with children, you can do this. You might be more comfortable working on crank cases or slinging cement, but you can do this. And if you think being a doting father isn’t manly, then you’re looking at all wrong. Being a Dad, a good Dad, is the truest test of manhood. Fathers who think being a man means that the aforementioned pieces of advice can be summed up as women’s work, really aren’t men at all. They’re still boys. Be a man. Now go get in the game.

Oh, and there’s one other thing. Consider this to be a bonus point. When you’ve just finished feeding a bottle to your infant and she smiles at you, duck. Duck now. Don’t ask.

Just do it.