Who would've thought...?!

I'm taking care of a friend's three-year old today because she went into labour prematurely and needed someone to take care of her daughter. I love spending time with her daughter who is just too darn adorable - love kids in general, love being around them, want to have my own someday (yes my uterus also does that beat-skipping thing..metaphorically speaking of course). But I have to admit that it's been a while since I've baby- or toddler- sat for anyone so I was a tad apprehensive about my abilities to do this well. Why? Because I think I've gotten increasingly scattered since I've been focusing all my energies almost exclusively on finishing my dissertation over the last couple of years. Scattered individuals, IMHO, do not make for great adult supervision. Even if I do say so myself, it's going much better than just well at this point. Things that have surprised me about today:

1. Apparently you don't have to have the correct answer for every "why" question. An answer will suffice. I'd prefer it to not be completely off base - there's the academic in me - but I'm happy to gloss over and invent completely fabricated, fairy-tale answers to the "where do babies come from?" and "does the baby hate mommy and that's why her tummy hurts? - i hope i didn't hurt mommy when i was born - do you know?" questions.

2. They take fairly long naps. And if you can control the anal-retentiveness while they're sleeping and resist the urge to straighten up, then you can totally work on dissertating.

3. I can whip up kid-friendly meals without having a recipe to follow.

4. I miss crafting.

5. Having a child around really does put so many other things into perspective.

Okay break over. Back to the dissertation until she wakes up. Then we're going to bake cookies. I'm so looking forward to full-time mommy-hood [when the time comes]....not that I was devoid of maternal instincts earlier but it just felt more concrete today than it has in a while :-).

Quick postscript/relevant aside: anyone who says that writing a dissertation is like having a baby couldn't be more deluded if they tried (myself included, but I've only said that to people nagging me about being in my 30s and unmarried]; not that I don't take pride in completed chapters but you can't love a dissertation and vice versa. Plus it doesn't have that neat baby smell and I don't particularly fancy taking it out to the park or cuddling it!