How would you feel?

Yesterday I had a singing gig at a bar, and my sitter called to cancel due to illness. It's one of the few things I do where I absolutely cannot bring the baby, and yet I can't cancel, either. Fortunately because I have a backup and a backup and a backup, I had a new sitter within five minutes. Bam!

A lot of our friends came. I positively basked in that. Boy have I missed my friends. The dumb inside jokes, the old stories. SO important. I feel like I get out a lot now - probably more than before I had the baby. But I never go dancing. And I don't see this changing, because you never know when you're going to have a "good" night where everyone shows up, and my sitter money is just best spent on sure things (book club, singing gigs, etc). I keep waiting for some month where I don't have much going on to set aside a night or two to go out and dance - but this never happens. So unless you're a single woman friend I can hike with or a fellow mom, I never see you.

Naturally a group of us moms sat at a table when I wasn't singing and talked about our kids all night. I used to think these conversations must be mind numbingly boring; now I find them utterly fascinating. What do you do about bedtimes, toddlers with attitude, birthday parties? This is all information I need to know. Everyone asked if I'd have another, and I recounted my fears if having lucked out with this one and not being so lucky next time (either with the baby's health or temperament or both). Have I mentioned that every sitter I have tells me what a good boy Bumpus is, so calm and easy? Maybe they say that to all the parents, but I think they're right. I'd love to say it's my stellar parenting skills, the fact that he's always with me so he feels safe, etc, but honestly I think it has nothing to do with me, I think it's just him. In other words, I lucked out. And I don't trust that luck to hit twice! Anyway it's been ages since I've felt any real compelling desire for another baby. I don't even think of it in a longing way anymore like I used to - I really am convinced the secret to happiness (for me) is one child. I often think my old longing for another baby wasn't so much wanting another child as it was I just wanted to name something!

So one topic that came up last night was the idea that kids have feelings, too, that should be honored as much as we honor our own. One friend said she is very scared of the dark, so how would she feel if she called to her husband in another room and said she was scared, and he ignored her or yelled to her to just go back to sleep? I've often thought about how people don't want their children obsessed with "screens" because they should be able to entertain themselves and not use games or videos as a "crutch", but then I think about how I pretty much glue myself to a phone or television to avoid life's boring moments - waiting in line at the post office, stuck in traffic, bored at home at night, etc. Why should I expect a little kid to be quiet and stare into space like a good little boy when I can't even do that? Why do we expect more from little kids than we demand from ourselves?

Here's a picture of Bumpus in his crib. He was in the middle of telling me something VERY IMPORTANT.