Going to work with baby spit on your lapel and getting all warm and oogie when a coworker points it out to you.

Personally, I make a concerted effort to prevent my friends and family from touching my baby so as to prevent the dreaded baby fever.

Baby fever can rapidly sweep a community once a single baby is brought into it's midst. Within a year you have a dozen extra babies and no one can ever go out dancing again.

As soon as a young woman (especially) or a young man holds a baby in their arms they can become infected. They suddeny start to think how sweet this little sleeping bundle is and how wonderful of a parent they would be.

This of course is madness, and I try to warn them, but even with the most cautious defenses, the baby fever infects and spreads throughout the family (even reinfecting my wife, poor woman).

But of course, if you are honest about it, you do admit that yes, having kids is the best thing in the universe, just because of that sweet sweet parental crack baby smell.

You got it right. I have 3 children, the youngest 26, but I remember those feelings as if was yesterday.

Mine's only 5, and already I miss my baby-smell crack.

Kids don't last.

You got it right on, Keith! God, how I miss those sleepless nights! My youngest is 24 now. I have a bunch of grandkids too. They say that being a grandparent is even better - all the fun and none of the responsibility, but that's bullshit really. There's nothing like the real thing! The happiest times of my life were when my kids were still little.

Of course, I was still young then - No way could I handle it these days!

Keef, you fiend, you. If you must do the caveman thing, bring home some frickin' whole wheat bread. That's nearly as bad as making Jiffy cornbread instead of cornbread from scratch. Jeez...:)

...from trying to sucker couples/any other innocent bystanders into having kids. Your idea of happiness may not equal theirs, and it's an unfair thing to do if you don't know the couple's circumstances. Hell, if I was married, I'd _really_ hate someone pulling that on me. :P

...until the new-parent hormonal surge has worn off.

Maybe it's part of my unenlightened, barren state, but I've just never understood the obsession with baby poop--and this from someone who used to have to *document* the bowel movements of her students* (a memory I've been repressing all these years).

*profoundly DD kids at a residential school where teachers were also caregivers to a certain extent.

Watching your kid grow up -- heck, watching your kid just exist -- is the best entertainment there is. Kids literally glow with life. Enjoy!