To all of my friends and family out there who currently don't have kids but plan on having one (some?) someday... Please take the time to enjoy your kid-free life. As soon as the kids hit, these will be considered luxuries:
1. Using the bathroom by yourself.
This started off as a paranoid parent thing where you're freaked out that somehow your infant will miraculously figure out how to move, turn suicidal, and then suffocate on the closest, remotely soft thing. I blame all the same folks who tell you that having anything in the crib will kill your child. Soon, we won't be able to put sheets in the cribs. Then baby started getting mobile, and you were genuinely worried about letting him out of sight because he would manage to choke on whatever non-baby-proofed item you have and die. And then baby started walking and figured out how to open doors, and now you're doomed because he's used to being in the bathroom with you.
2. Sleeping in.
To put things in perspective... Sleeping in until 0730 is equivalent to how I used to feel sleeping in until 1000. Now if we are still in bed at 0800, it's like how I used to sleep in until 1100. And if we happen to still be in bed at 0800, the first thing I do is jump out of bed to make sure the kids are still breathing. Because you never know, those crib sheets might just have suffocated them.
3. Staying up late... by choice.
Sure, you'll be up at 0200 in the morning, but it'll be because a small child wanted/needed you to be up, not because there was a cool concert or a late evening with friends at a bar. Oh, and in case you haven't heard, giving a toddler any Mountain Dew is a terrible (really, really terrible!) idea which will guarantee you to be up much later than you desire. That stuff just lives in their system for hours.
4. Going most anywhere spontaneously.
Need to go to the grocery store to pick up the eggs you forgot you needed for a recipe? Not so easy anymore. It now takes me ten minutes to even review the items I need for the kids to go to the grocery store. That doesn't even include the time it takes for me to wrestle kids into car seats or to actually gather up the items on said list. I'm convinced my child will be an Olympic wrestler. And that's just a trip to a grocery store. The efforts involved in planning an overnight trip or (gasp!) a plane ride only increase exponentially. We have a plane trip scheduled for June that I've been planning since January. No kidding.
5. Eating a meal leisurely.
I don't think I need to amplify anymore on this if you've read my post on how to lose weight.
6. Having a coherent conversation with another human being in the presence of small children.
There's more back and forth when talking to other adults in the presence of your children than championship tennis matches. You're lucky to squeeze out a sentence or two before your child wanders off and tries to kill himself on a stuffed animal, concrete sidewalk, or whatever previously innocuous item is nearby. If your friend happens to be patient, you'll realize they've been staring at you... waiting for you to answer the question they asked.... fifteen minutes ago. By the time you've finished "small" talk with your friends, it will be just about time for you to leave.
7. Having no constraints on your clothing choices/purchases.
I look forward to the day when I can even think about purchasing something lovely that requires dry cleaning or something that I don't have to wonder whether I can breastfeed in it. Since Anduin doesn't spit up often, I'm at least past the stage of worrying about whether baby spit up will blend in. And I've given up on wearing "real" shoes that require heels. I'm barely able to walk around in them by myself, let alone toting a toddler and infant while wearing them.
So next time, you kid free people use the bathroom (by yourself!) or sleep in late, having a nice breakfast in bed, dressed in your dry-clean only silk pajamas, and discuss the latest events with someone you love at that cute bed and breakfast you're visiting for a surprise weekend away... Enjoy it. You won't fully be able to appreciate what you have until it's gone.
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