Let's make a baby, baby please...

Last week I got to go over bsom's house and see his and t's new son, Ian. I don't know if I've ever seen a baby that young before - I was all like "he's so tiny" and they were all like "actually, he's big for his age".

Having a close friend have a child, plus seeing many of my coworkers and people I knew from high school and college, has made madanthony think about kids a lot. My general thought on children has been that I probably should avoid them, because I'm not sure I should be responsible for another living thing, at least not one as fragile as a child. I did, after all, once accidentally shut my cat between the front door and the screen door - I frantically searched the house for her, before tracking her panicked meows to the front door.

But on the other hand, there are a number of people I never thought of as being able to raise a gerbil, let alone a child, who have become parents in the last few years and seem to be doing quite well. So maybe I'd do OK.

And there is something cool about the idea of kids - the idea of leaving someone behind on the earth after you are gone to hopefully, in some way, make the world a better place. When I look at how my parents raised me, there are a lot of things I would like to be able to do for a next generation, lots of traditions I would love to pass on. There are also a lot of things I would do differently - my parents were very overprotective, and I think it's contributed to my insecurity, my shyness, my lack of a sense of adventure or willingness to take risks.

But the whole kid thing is probably academic anyway - given my, well, unwillingness to take risks, I'm single, and don't see that changing anytime soon. So unless something drastically changes in my life, I doubt there will ever be a mini-mad.