Little babies are fun; in fact, they are absolutely adorable. I hope this opening statement will absolve me of the guilt the following words are going drown me in. So, babies are sweet little things, but why do most parents the world over make out that their babies are the sweetest? The most common and prodigious phenomenon of nature continues to be the world?s greatest event every time there is a new

entry into the parents? ranks. Creation is wonderful and there are few who can refute that, but certain laws of nature don?t allow for improvisations and such laws apply to little babies. Every baby, if he is a normal little bounder, just has to cry when his little food bag is empty. There is; nothing particularly intelligent about that, but there are parents who go poetic on this attribute of the little one.

Then comes a stage where a baby just has to roll over on to her stomach periodically. Every baby does it. But try explaining that to a fanatic parent. ?Oh but she does it all by herself. It?s just marvellous. You should watch her, you really should. Come on Baby boo, on your stomach?. Much does ?Babyboo? care for parental pride at that stage. While the bored parent of four shuffles her feet waiting for the demonstration the new parent is totally engrossed in repeating the request.

After a while Baby seems to oblige but not because she has some Mohammed Ali complex of Pam the Greatest but because her little body wants to. This act is promptly interpreted as the corroboration of the parental statement that Baby is so intelligent and look how she did it on request! There is something extremely appealing about babies, and little detours in conversation now and then centred on a sudden gurgle or cooing is perfectly normal. What is vexing is one has one?s attention constantly dragged away from some very absorbing discussion to a perpetual refrain of My baby now...Babies, left to themselves are charming creatures; even in their tantrum-prone state. Add a dash of parental pride by all means, but when

it increases beyond proportion, the compound is unpalatable. A state of extreme pathos presents itself when an unmarried person visits friends who have just acquired parental status. The new Papa and Mama might be slightly sensitive about fitting into the gushing new mold initially. But when Baby suddenly gurgles and the visiting friend responds impulsively, it is completely out of hand. Another interesting transformation in many fresh parents is from I-love-babies to I-love-only-my-babies. Two sets of new parents get together and after the cursory chucking of chins of each other?s baby there is a very compulsive game set in motion called i-vaguely- know-you-are-talking-about-your-kid-but-what- I-have-to say-about-mine is far more interesting. It is confounding how the love for babies gets concentrated into a concentric point once one becomes a parent. There are exceptions to every generality but sometimes one wishes the exceptions would become the generality and vice versa. This would be a nice state of affairs in the meet-my-baby context or should it be contest?