Family Is For Fun-Seekers

I noticed this WaPo article, thought about posting on it, but was too tired. (The article was about only educated older people having kids. Marriage is out if you're young and poor.) Little Toot decided to get thirsty at 4:30 a.m. and furthermore, decided to stay up and complain that his need was not immediately satisfied. So he wailed, even after the drink, until 5:30 a.m. He paid me back by posing as he did for the above posted picture. Priceless. So, okay, I forgive him. He's just so cute. And, those passionate kisses. Swoon. And watching his face as I rolled through pictures of him in iPhoto, with Toot narrating, "Awwww, baby" also priceless. And dancing together to Smash Mouth's song All Star also priceless. Imagine diapered baby butt moves to these words:

Somebody once told me
The world was gonna roll me
I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed
She was lookin' kinda dumb
With her finger and her thumb
In the shape of an "L" on her forehead

James Lileks heard a guy on Michael Medved say he wasn't going to have children because he didn't want his life messed up. It's positively chic these days to be an emotional child stuck at the anal stage in psychological development with none of the fun that goes with said stage. That's just the paradox though. In order to continue to have fun like a child, you must grow up and have children to be reminded about the other part of childhood (not just the mine, mine, mine! part):

I hadn’t thought about the pleasures of sidewalk ice-cracking for a long time. Decades, maybe. Hard winter ice isn’t all that satisfying to crack, because there’s so much around, and winter rules all; it feels like letting the air out of the tires on a Gestapo truck in 1939. The most satisfying time is mid-April, during a thaw, when water pools beneath the ice, and you can really crack it up. It’s almost grateful. But this ice was ready to go, and we found a sheet that had the perfect thickness: it resisted the first blow, shuddered at the second, and was sundered by the third. We stood in the driveway and hacked at the ice with our heels until a yard of rubble cluttered the pavement. I thought of this today while listening to a Medved show about a WaPo piece on marriage; seems only the well-off can marry these days, and the poor decline the opportunity. A caller – male, age 31 – noted how he didn’t want to marry, and didn’t want kids, because they would ruin his freedom. Medved gently pointed out how things change, and gave the fellow a useful piece of news: kids are fun. You never consider that when you’re fancy-free and unburdened with diaper-filling squall-o-matic obligation units, but they’re fun, in ways you can never predict. You fill your day with all sorts of important tasks, but in the end nothing beats standing in the drive way in the wan March light, laughing and cracking the ice. That's the stuff you remember on your deathbed, I'll bet. That's the stuff you remember when you leave the building and strap on the wings.

So in honor of childlike joy, I include these lyrics for James:

The ice we skate is getting pretty thin
The waters getting warm so you might as well swim
My world's on fire how about yours
That's the way I like it and I'll never get bored

With kids, life is never boring. More importantly, it's always full and full of joyful surprises. My world's on fire, how about yours?