on recidivist procreation

we have a few friends whom we know because they had their first kid around the same time we had our first kid. we met through a neighborhood "new mommy" list that my normally misanthropic bride signed up for about three years ago. turns out to have been a good move -- the people we met are fantastically wonderful and, now, three years into parenthood, our only social acquaintances. it's amazing how one's social life reorganizes itself around one's proclivity to spawn. the frequency with which i carouse with single friends has greatly diminished over the past 36 months. so, too, has the frequency with which i drink to excess (somewhere other than my kitchen/office/crawlspace), pass out and urinate on friends' couches, fornicate with dudes/goats, and generally ever see single friends other than over lunch or because they're my colleagues whose mere existence mocks my life.

well! now, just like us, our baby-friends are beginning to spawn anew. in fact. we're not even the first! we have one friend who had baby numero dos just two months ago (on valentine's day! awwww, sweetness!). another good friend delivered her second boy just after that. we have a third friend whose first child was born within a couple months of our first child, late spring 2005. they had child number two ... a year ago. meaning they had a baby when their first unable-to-rationalize/cope child was barely (not even?!) two.

we, as you may know, are expecting Child 2.0 sometime between five minutes and eight weeks from now. i, being journalistically inclined, did some cursory interviewing of these fascinating Recidivist Procreators. here are some of the pearls of wisdom i have recently picked up:

1) "i always thought having a second baby would make life marginally harder. i mean, we've done this before, right? yeah, well, it doesn't make just a little bit harder. it makes them exponentially harder. it makes like freakishly more difficult."

2) "will you please fake my death so i can come live in your crawlspace? all i want is sleep."

3) "i couldn't find the baby's shoes this week and my wife was at work but she wasn't answering her phone and so i got really pissed ... and i sort of kicked my bedroom door down."

4) "well. it's been a year now and i feel like i am just becoming human again. sorry for falling asleep in the middle of that sentence."

5) "you know how you look at people with no kids and you hate them? you hate them because they can go out to dinner at any time; you hate them because they get to see movies; you hate them because they stay up past 11 and they still complain about their meaningless little lives. right? well when you have two kids, you hate people who have only one kid. you despise them. they have no idea how easy they've got it."

and so in conclusion: my little passionfruits ... please fake my death so i can come live in your crawlspace. i promise the sound of my weeping won't disturb you too much.