Why? Because !

One of the hardest questions that non-parents ask parents is "Why did you want children ?"

You see, to a non-parent the downside is all too evident : expense, sleep-deprivation, worry, sudden absence of free-time, weight gain, possibility of death, labour pain, excrement. All the bad stuff is measurable and obvious : what is there that's non-measurable and subtle that could possibly compensate ?

I was listening to Nelly Furtado's "Turn Off The Light" in the car on the gridlocked M40 this morning and it reminded me of a time sometime last century when Stanetta was little. I was showing her how you could play an mp3 file on a computer, which was a quite a new concept back then. At the time I was working away a lot and this was one of my rare trips home.

I played "Turn Off the Light" in an early version of Windows Media Player, which interpreted the music on the screen with a visualisation composed of a swirling pattern of coloured lines, which seemed to please her and then slowly seemed to hypnotise her and she fell into a very untypically deep sleep on my knee. I let the music and the animation loop round as she slept and I snuggled my little girl for seeming hours, not just to stop her falling off.

If I could ever put that feeling into words, then that would be my answer to the question.