For the past week, I have been spending my time with the pediatric crowd. My niece is 2 and a half, very precocious, very energetic, very talkative, and very bossy. Under the guise of not wanting to have my niece exposed to toxic dust, my very pregnant sister dropped off my niece at my parents' house mid week. Surprisingly, my niece had little anxiety of being abandoned her mother and father. Instead, for her it was a week of fun with grandma, grandpa, one cranky aunt and a ferret. Maybe I am exagerating there was no ferret, it was a marmoset.
One fact that is strange and true: children like me. Children like cats, seem to be attracted to the person that is most uncomfortable around them. They want to sit on your lap, or rub up against your leg with their runny noses and sticky hands. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy the television programming they inspire, as I still watch Saturday morning cartoons. I just worry that when I am around children because they are small I am going to break them (or beat them out of sheer annoyance of having to read the same Curious George book 4 times in a row).
On Friday, my one free day from my family, I drove up to San Francisco. I visited UCSF and did a little adult talking with fellow scientists. And then more babies. A former student from my lab is at UCSF and he has a 2.5 year old too. At night I went to go visit my college friend, O and his wife A. They recently had a baby this summer, so I got to visit a mostly immobile baby. She took a little nap at the restaurant while we ate dinner and was the center of attention when we got back to their apartment.
Don't get me wrong all of these babies are cute and well behaved. I enjoy cooing, oohhing and ahhhhing for a few hours. I can even tolerate drawing 10 versions of a bunny rappit on post-it paper. I just don't know if I have a long term tolerance for this behavior. I enjoy the auntiness of children the visiting, bringing of gifts, the feeding of sugary treats and marmosets.
PS.
For the past week, intermittently through my baby time I have been listening to John Hodgeman's audiobook. (He is the PC from the Mac commercials) It is a brilliant listen. I have been laughing about snippets from the book everyday.
2 comments:
FYI- if and when you have your own kids, it will be completely different. Not only will you enjoy to baby talk/repeated books/runny noses(maybe not that one)/etc, but you will think your baby is the cutest, sweetest thing in the world (even if it's pretty ugly to everyone else- not that it would be, because you're not ugly et#1). I don't speak from personal experience since I have no kids, but I've spent way too long watching others change when they have kids not to notice this pretty universal fact. You'll be a great mom.
Public Service Announcement: If anyone is looking to get impregnated, Xtian volunteers. He announced this at dinner the other night (and almost had 1 taker right on the spot I think!), but just wanted to let y'all know since not everyone heard.
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