[thedoc]

Originally Posted by ChristinaM

We're probably close in age but I have no kids or grandkids and hence have absolutely nothing to be tired about. Dogs and cats aren't all that exhausting.

I've had children and now grandchildren, I've also had dogs but no cats. If you didn't have children as a conscious choice, I'd say good for you for living your own life. Without over analyzing, it could be that your work with helping others may have been a substitute.

For myself I can't think of anything nicer that holding a young child while they go to sleep. When my younger daughter was born I owned a hobby shop and I would take he along with me in the store. We would stop at a small resuraunt before opening the store and I'd just carry her in in the car seet. Later she would always order a 'short stack of pancakes'. In the shop I sold model trains and had a platform in the one display window with a loop of track so I could run trains for the kids to watch, the platform was low so kids could see without being lifted up. During the day my daughter would take a nap and I would put some blankets on the platform in the middle of the loop and she would sleep in the display window. Sometimes people would walk by and look at the "display" in the window, and then my daughter would move and they would exclaim "Thats a real Baby!" One of the things I regret is that I never took a photo of hwer sleeping there, and I was next door to a photo studio, my neighbor could have done it easily.