Hairy Legs and First Dates

First, let me say I am sorry we haven't written in a while. We have a goal of writing at least two times a week, and we are already failing at that! I want to do better, but so many times we think we don't have anything interesting to write about. Today, I just thought, "Well, this might not be interesting, but how would I know?" So here is my story for today:

Niki and I were having dinner the other night and we both remarked that we were eating way too fast (as usual). We have been trying to slow down and have found that when we are talking it takes us much longer to finish our meal. Now, I don't want you to think that we don't talk at the dinner table. We do. Just not in the two minutes our food is front of us. No, we see the arrival of the food as a time act like ravenous monkeys who may never eat again. So, in an effort to eat at a normal human pace, I posed some questions to Niki about some parental decisions we will have to make someday: How old do you think our daughter should be when we start letting her wear make-up? What about shaving her legs? How old should she be when we let her go on her first date? Yikes! We are about eight weeks away from having a little girl actually in the world, so we probably shouldn't even be thinking that far ahead, but it was a fun conversation nonetheless. We both agreed that we had no idea exactly how old that she should be for any of those things and expressed our hope that we could just help her make the best decisions possible. I, of course, decided she doesn't need to go on her first date ever...but I imagine I am going to have to bend on that one! The fun thing about the conversation was dreaming about what the future might hold for our little girl. I wondered if my parents ever had these conversations about me before I was born. And I realized that I am slowly making that transition to thinking like a parent and beginning to understand my own parents even more. There certainly is a lot to wonder about, to think about, and to worry about...but I can't wait for it. I can just see her now putting on her make-up and getting ready for her first date and thinking, "I wonder why dad made me wait until I was 40 to do this?"