Babies!

I spend all day with babies. They're really cute at the newborn stage; they're so new they look like little old men, full of wrinkles, their faces in an innocent scowl. They spontaneously burst into wailing shrieks of displeasure, but are easily consoled and fall back to sleep again. Their poop doesn't smell. They make little gasping sounds while they drink their milk, and blow bubbles from their tiny lips before they spit up. Sometimes they move their fists (with their tightly-clenched teeny tiny fingers) into their mouths, and they'll contentedly suck on their little fists until they unknowingly pull their hand out of their mouth - and then they're shrieking in displeasure again.

When you pick up a crying baby and hold it close to you, bounce it around a bit, and sing it a song -- and it stops crying, it's like magic. Then it opens its eyes and looks at you, and blows some bubbles or reaches its tiny little hand toward you, and suddenly you're in love.

And then it screams again, and you're pleased as punch that this baby is not yours, it's someone else's, and you can go home to the quiet of a childless home (for now).

So many of my friends are starting to have kids, and while there's a part of me (the part whose ovaries twinge a bit every time I examine a new baby) who can't wait to be a babymama, it's just a tiny sliver in the piechart of my attitude towards impending motherhood.

The rest of this pie says: no thanks for now!

(In case you were wondering)