On Parenting

My wife and I were watching Stargate and a very funny interchange occurred between a few members of one of the "SG" teams. The wife of one of them was expecting a baby, and the team leader was talking about his four children. I edited it slightly to remove the swearing, but this is how it went:

Team Lead (played by Adam Baldwin, who also played an equally lovable character in another science fiction show I enjoyed, Firefly): All night screaming, projectile vomiting, nuclear diapers. You have no idea. The reason they make them so cute is so you don't suffocate them in their sleep.

Other Guy: Sir, you have 4 kids.

TL: Yeah, why do you think I enjoy my job so much? Don't get me wrong. I love the little buggers to death, but trust me, having four kids makes going through a Stargate and facing off against alien bad guys look like nothing. This is relaxing.

OG: Then why'd you have 4?

TL: One's pretty bad, but you figure you gotta have two so they can have a brother or sister. Then you have two boys, and your wife says she wants a girl so you figure three kids can't be worse than two, right? What you don't realize is your brain is fried because you haven't slept. After three, four is no big deal. You're so deep in nothing seems to matter anymore. It's chaos. You just try to make it through each day alive. In the end, you spend all the energy you have left trying to get them into bed, only to lie awake praying they don't get hooked on drugs, or hurt, or worse. Or wind up dead in an alley somewhere.

OG: I can't wait, sir.

TL: Yeah, the miracle of birth. I'll tell you what a miracle is: birth control that works.

My wife and I laughed really, really hard. We love our kids, but sometimes these emotions are present, too. Very funny.