More Successful Partying with Kids -

There they were, the little rugrats, crawling and pulling and pushing around.  A small one named Natalia, about 8 months old now, sat with me for a time, using her little fingers to grab at the buttons on my shirt (they were easily the most interesting) and then at my glasses.   I've gotten so used to speaking Polish to kids that even when I see kids who only speak English, I start to speak Polish to them.  I do it partially because they won't respond with a slew of words that I don't yet know, and partially because I happen to see only kids of Polish parents.  That's okay.

Anyway, this little one pulled at my glasses and made me think about what it would be to have a little one like that of my own.  Whether you adamantly want a child or adamantly do not want a child, you have to confront the question at some point in your life with some level of awareness, which in turn calls for a decent amount of soul searching and some self-education.  Of course, this presumes you sit in a financially pretty enough spot to make an informed decision, and then execute whatever decision you make. Even if you don't think so now, I'm willing to bet that having kids will eventually make your life infinitely richer in many of the ways that matter when you get older.  Whether you have success in your career or not, you can't really be proud of yourself the way you can be of your child.

Then there's the need to just grow up and not put yourself at the center of your life, or to de-centralize yourself as a part of your worldview.  Kids might do that. Then again, they might not, in which case you shouldn't necessarily have them, you might not be ready.  I say/write both sides like that because both are valid, and when one side or the other evokes emotion, remember that it probably signals your position on the subject, and not mine.  I'm decidedly in between.  I think, though, that having kids is probably a good idea, in general.  We can't create a perfect world for them, though, or redo what it is that we didn't have right in our lives by making their lives into models.  There's a balance in there, one I'm seeking, and maybe on the cusp of finding, on a daily basis now.