Want kids, think again!

I have come to the conclusion that the answer to wanting children is to spend a few hours with someone else's kids. My friend has been staying with her mother over the last few weeks along with her two children ages 3 and 1. Now these kids are absolutely adorable but it has made me realize how hard kids are when you have them around twenty four hours a day seven days a week. I think it is hard to fit everything in my schedule into one day just imagine factoring in baths, diaper changes, naps, snacks, meals and buckling car seats any time you need to go anywhere. Those things alone add at least five hours to a day when you cant do other things. Now I am not saying that I don't like children. I love kids, playing ball with my nephew and Barbies with my niece are some of my favorite pastimes. I just don't want any children of my own quite yet. On Sunday my nephew was staying with me and he had an accident on my king size love sac. To clean up this one mess involved giving him a bath, acquiring clean church cloths, washing the dirty clothes, removing the love sac cover and washing that. This whole process took at least an hour and that does not count the day that it took for the love sac to air dry. But the hardest thing was not letting my nephew know that this upset me. It was not his fault he had an accident and letting him know how upset I was would just make matters worse than they already were. Now I add my favorite place to study children at the mall. I work in a woman's clothing store and see children with their mothers all day long. Most kids are good for the first few minutes but any longer than that in one store they are crying, throwing things on the floor or dumping out the contents of their drinks. Now the moms usually have three responses to these actions. The first is ignoring their child and hope they will quite, this just perpetuates the situation. The next would be to yell at the child and make just as much a disruption as their child. The last response is few and far between, this is when the parent actually makes an effort to find out the problem their child is experiencing and solve it. Everyday I am reminded that i am just not ready for the responsibility of children, cute as they may be.