My wife’s about 11months pregnant right now, and we are beyond ready for this new baby to arrive. Even while our first one is off & on crying in his room instead of SLEEPING THE HELL OUT OF THE NIGHT, we’re pretty happy about the pending arrival. In the preceding months there have been a few discussions with other parents and friends about a 2nd baby. The best way to summarize these talks is “Mostly positive but it’s okay to shut your noisehole.” It’s amazing that some people believe simply having an opinion and a voice make either of them valid in everybody else’s world.

I have seen a lot of seemingly unsolicited voicing of the sentiment “WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP PROCREATING?!” and “I don’t want a baby ever, OMG, what would I do with all the random dick walking around my apartment?!” Hey, kids force you into a role you aren’t really ever ready for, but if your heart’s in the right place, you get ready pretty quickly. In the meantime, you realize that maybe all that dick isn’t in your best interest. Sucks to have your priorities, morals, and ideals shuffled for you. Life will do it if you don’t.

As for kids in restaurants, I feel really sorry for people who hate it when a kid saunters in and makes a little ruckus. Those poor folks think they have the right to a fancy, quiet dinner at Olive Garden! Hey, money-poor assholes, save up a few more bucks and eat elsewhere or head to the bar. The parents are doing the best we can to keep that kid under control, the good ones among us leave if the kid’s losing it, and it sucks ten times as much for us. So keep your stink-eye for your doctor when they say “Hey, how about a little less dick in your life?”

Sure, there are people who do NOT want kids. Some of them already have kids. Some of them don’t want the intrusion into their life of work, school, extended adolescence, I CANNOT FUCKING CONCENTRATE WHEN DANCING WITH THE STARS IS ON, promiscuity, drunken camping, and/or Crossfitting. Other people just don’t have the drive to procreate. Why can I still hear the judge’s scores, AND getting questions about what I’m doing? Leave me alone, I’m talking about how great our life is… faaaaawk…

So here’s the deal…
We’re parents. We parent. We are a family. We aren’t hobbyists when it comes to child-rearing. We’re sold on the idea of soccer practices, sports camps, play-dates, reading books to our kids 20 times a day, and major life prioritization. That’s for us to deal with. When I hear (from a few people) “Man, we think just the 1 kid is too much,” we already know that doing it well for just 1 kid – as there’s no real “Right” way – is hard enough. But we wanted another kid.
And our 2 kids will someday replace the scores of people who don’t want kids. Hell, they’ll replace US. And when the anti-kid folks grow old and diaper-filling, I will present to my kids a list of their names, and say “Yeah, they didn’t want to add to the generation that is now alive to help them in their final days.”

All I can hope is that we’ve taught them to do the right thing and stay out of other people’s business.