When you teach your son, you teach your son's son.

I suppose it's pretty well documented that I'm a bit of a nutter, right? So I suppose it's not really any surprise that the other night when the NPN's boy out of the blue knocked on the door and asked if he could play with Nathan, I was a bit...verklempt. I don't remember anyone ever knocking on my door when I was a child and asking if I could play. My primary goal in raising Nathan (besides the obvious, safe, happy, loved, etc) is for him to be well-liked, to be accepted, to be okay with whoever he is and to have friends who are okay with that too. That's why when I saw how many people showed up to celebrate his birthday party, I had to take a moment to breathe and get control. That's why when his friends at school run over to hug him before he goes home, I almost always have a lump in my throat.

I was a wildly unpopular, often teased kid as I grew up. I had almost no friends with whom to spend time and truthfully just spent a lot of time being alone. I hated it. One of my biggest fears out of all this infertility nonsense is that Nathan will grow up lonesome without having had a sibling or twenty around to occupy his time. I realize that there are other, probably better, goals for a parent to have when bringing up their child. But don't you think that all parents try to fix the one area of their childhood that was painful to them so that their child doesn't have the same experience?

"I can't go back and label myself as an outcast because I was a pretty well-adjusted kid, but I can certainly relate to the feeling of being an outsider. "
--Lasse Hallstrom