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9:03 AM, Monday, November 25th, 2013:   If you're meant to be a parent, I think you know, but I'm not sure you're ever prepared for just, how, happy it can feel...   So it's a Saturday morning and I built a little box fort in Vienna's play area and we're been goin' back and forth and laughing and having fun. She can also legit be tickled where she laughs so hard she can't breathe which is a milestone in any kid's life. Exhausted, from the box tunnel and laughing she laid on my chest and sighed. The perfect fit in the crook of my arm and I felt like molasses. A warm sense of love that was so pure I could only think of what others described as the pull from the "white light" as they're floating to heaven. You don't care that you're DYING the pull is so strong.   For me it isn't actual death, but the death of nearly every pursuit that was my career. I just want to be in that box tunnel. Like, forever. I may go through the motions here and there, I talk about it now and again... but it's not like the fight isn't in me anymore, I actively don't want it.   (Yes, that heavenly pull does indeed lessen when she screams for 15 minutes before bed.)   That aside, I'm a month away from 2 of these literal bundles of joy and I can't fathom doubling this feeling. It's funny, I used to think parents were so into their children because of something lacking in their marriage, but your heart does actually grow exponentially (and mine wasn't too tiny to begin with) and everything that was ever "you" vanishes. And you're happy about that. That's the OTHER thing. Everything single people say that is a negative about marriage and kids? Isn't. I mean, of course it IS if you didn't want to be married and you didn't want kids... but when you're happily married you don't think of kids as dream killers. You don't care if you have sex every day because the constant need to orgasm is a selfish pursuit. A fucking wonderful one, no doubt, but the priority shifts. The thing is? YOU SHIFT IT. Kids don't. You could argue the kids force the shift, but we MADE the kids. So the chicken or the egg argument ceases to exist. We chose all of this and are thrilled. When you're single and fearful of marriage (wow, that has never been me - lol) you paint everything as a negative. Remember that scene from When Harry Met Sally?   Sally When Joe and I started seeing each other, we wanted exactly the same thing. We wanted to live together, but we didn't want to get married because every time anyone we knew got married, it ruined their relationship. They practically never had sex again. It's true, it's one of the secrets that no one ever tells you. I would sit around with my girlfriends who have kids - and, actually, my one girlfriend who has kids, Alice - and she would complain about how she and Gary never did it anymore. She didn't even complain about it, now that I think about it. She just said it matter-of-factly. She said they were up all night, they were both exhausted all the time, the kids just took every sexual impulse they had out of them. And Joe and I used to talk about it, and we'd say we were so lucky we have this wonderful relationship, we can have sex on the kitchen floor and not worry about the kids walking in. We can fly off to Rome on a moment's notice. And then one day I was taking Alice's little girl for the afternoon because I'd promised to take her to the circus, and we were in the cab playing "I Spy" - I spy a mailbox, I spy a lamp-post - and she looked out the window and she saw this man and this woman with these two little kids. And the man had one of the little kids on his shoulders, and she said, "I spy a family." And I started to cry. You know, I just started crying. And I went home, and I said, "The thing is, Joe, we never do fly off to Rome on a moment's notice."   Harry And the kitchen floor?   Sally Not once. It's this very cold, hard Mexican ceramic tile.   Ha. Now, did her friend Alice actually say "we never do it"? Or did she say "we often choose sleep over sex"? Sally catches herself when she used "complain", but could the entire conversation be her issue? Now listen, of course some couples never do it and believe me, I may not have the fight for my career? But guess what couple will put Little Mermaid on for the 78th time and bang in a closet while the kids watch TV if we have to? It's the same couple that does indeed get so tired that we go to bed too late and mumble to each other "are we having sex yet?" as our last words before sleep drowns us. And we joke about it the next morning. Does that really sound sad to single people? I have to rule myself out of this because even when I was single I was in between marriages. LOL. I mean, it was just always in me to be married and have kids. Life just threw me some crazy hands at the beginning. <shrugs> It's all in place now, so, yay!   But yeah, I guess this is a conversation to have with single people. Because I wonder if their opinion of marriage is more than just running into unhappy couples but a complete miscommunication of what sounds bad to them - but is in fact a sign of maturity and happiness. Obviously a combination of both, but my mind is certainly shifting a bit. Dig it.   So Jimmy came over for the Buckeye game and we were on babysitting duty. Which meant, let's make crazy basketball shots and make sure the rebound doesn't hit my one year old in the noggin'. (sigh) I swear I'm 13 some times. Fun video though.     The wall behind the backboard is 9 feet for crying out loud. How he got that over twice is beyond me. I have yet to. ;-)   Alright, so Thanksgiving! Tree! Buckeyes! What a week! Can't wait.   Adam