I HAVE TO DISAGREE

I started thinking about this article tonight while I snuggled my freshly bathed daughter, giving her her bedtime bottle. This my favorite part of the day. She smells so delicious and she is so tired that she drinks her bottle quickly and usually falls asleep in my arms allowing me to place her in the crib, give her kisses and then tiptoe out of her nursery.

I remember reading this article right around the time I had returned back to work. The article basically says that parents exaggerate the joy that having children brings them to make them feel better about the financial cost of having children.

A study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that parents create rosy pictures of parental joy as a way to justify the huge investment that kids require.

Six months in, I cannot even imagine this to be true. In the last six months Elle has brought so much joy to our lives that it is even hard to describe. I find myself tearing up all the time out of happiness and love. I find myself smiling ALL THE TIME because I know she is watching me and I look at her for even a second she will smile back at me with her open mouth grin that she does. There is so much laughter in a house with a baby. Whether it is Kenny's reaction to something gross (ahem) that she has done. Or we have found yet another way to get her to do her rare belly laughs. Or she hits another milestone that we have been working so hard for her to hit. The only word that can describe it is joy.
And no amount of money, (though children ARE expensive) would EVER outweigh the amount of happiness that Elle has brought us in the six months that she has been in our life.

So bring on the tutitions and the clothes and the diapers and the cars and the ballet lessons. It is so incredibly worth it!!