We subscribe to at least three different baby magazines. As we were new parents we were bombarded with subscription offers and in the early, hazy days of parenthood either Andrea or myself signed us up for one not necessarily knowing the other had signed up for one as well.

My favorite of these “baby” magazines is Parents. While it’s still slightly skewed toward the mommy, it does have interesting articles (In this month’s issue, for example, there’s an article on a father who took three months off for paternity leave) and focuses more on the child and the family than on just mommy.

So, this week, the December 2005 issue arrived. Inside there is a fun little piece called “The Facts of Life” by Beth Turner. As the tagline of the article states, these are “Wacky stats about having kids that only a parent would appreciate.” Here are a few of my favorites along with my smart ass commentary (in bold).

No wonder it’s so hard to meet a good woman.
Between 1940 and 2002, 5,776,130 more boy babies than girl babies were born in America.

And every one of them has a blog.
A baby is born every eight seconds in the United States. That’s 11,205 per day, and just over 4 million per year.

Now if he’d only called it a Bugaboo, he’d have made a fortune.
An English architect named William Kent designed the first baby carriage around 1733. It was shaped like a scallop shell and pulled by a goat.

There’s a lot to be said for a career in the fast food industry.
To pay for your newborn’s public college education, you’ll need to sock away $20.26 a day (or $43.67 a day if he goes to a private college).

But after taxes, it’s only about $65,000.
A fair wage for the typical stay-at-home mom (sorry, no SAHDs here!) is estimated by Salary.com at $131,471 a year (including $88,009 for overtime, based on a 100-hour work week).

So, Hazel and Phinnaeus don’t make the list?
The most popular names for twins: Jacob and Joshua for boys. Hope and Faith for girls.

But it feels like 6,000.
You’ll change your baby’s diaper as many as 3,000 times during the first year.

Does that include server hosting fees?
You’ll spend as much as $14,600 on your baby by the time she’s 2 – enough to buy a new Ford Focus, Chrysler PT cruiser, or Honda Civic.

Somehow, making smart-ass t-shirts isn’t quite the same.
Disposable diapers were invented in 1949 by Marion Donovan, a mom who made them herself and sold them at Saks Fifth Avenue, in New York City. She got $1 million for the patent rights. It’s now a $17-billion-a-year industry.

Thank God we weren’t that lucky.
1 in 90: Odds of a woman having naturally conceived twins.
1 in 3: Odds of a woman having a multiple birth if she uses in vitro fertilization
1 in 540: Odds of a woman delivering three or more babies.