Prepare for a total lack of profundity: being a baby is great. I watch Hazel as she receives visitors or interacts with folks in public and I cannot see a serious problem with the life of a baby. You get carried everywhere, draw instant smiles and adoration from perfect strangers, and each of your bowel movements is heralded with more fanfare that an inert carbon rod back from a successful space mission. Babies are not only encouraged in, but enthusiastically congratulated for, belching. Not since college have I seen such positive support for burping, and I was VERY immature in college (unlike now obviously). And to think of a life in which you never have to wipe your own dirty buttocks again. It brings tears to my eyes that are in no way a reaction to that soiled diaper smell.

Of course, being a baby does have certain downsides. You can’t go on roller coasters. They don’t make bacon flavored baby food. You can’t walk or talk. I could go on, but there really is no point. Being a baby is simply the bee’s knees. What could be better? Well, maybe being a ninja baby would be better. Or a baby from the not too distant future whose crib is a wee flying saucer à la The Jetsons. But the basic formula is there: be a baby and let life heap awesomeness upon thee.