Why?

"Clear Skies for Santa" can be bid on here and "Santa Sees You" can be bid on here.

They're both just so darn cute, aren't they? You may remember, dear reader, that the first Santa was posted not too long ago...kind of as a teaser. It's true, my rapid pace has slowed over the past couple of days but for good reason! I went Christmas shopping. Yes, I ventured out today to purchase what needed to be purchased and I lived to tell about it. The Christmas shopping wasn't too bad but the grocery shopping was. One small child, one small, ear drum bursting, screaming child. That was what it took for me to consider taking a bottle of Scotch with me whenever I go grocery shopping.

This brings me to the topic of children and the whole idea of raising them. "Little people" I call them, not children, for I truly believe that most little people, nowadays, by the time they're 4 or so have a pretty good grasp of the adult world and it's basic functioning. After all, if they didn't how would they be able to manipulate their parents so well? I have mixed feelings about parents as well and their decision to produce little people. On the one hand it can be summed up by asking "Why?" Really. You dedicate X number of years of your life, who knows how much money and emotion and time and in the end it's really up to the little person themselves as to how they "turn out". I can think of many instances of kids from crappy homes that came out, for all intensive purposes, as functioning members of society and kids that came from seemingly stable homes that are now in politics...and who knows what that leads to...

Then the sympathetic side of me kicks in and I think of all the things that are going on in the world today and give kudos to parents for choosing to undertake raising a little person (or people) in such a tumultuous world with so many societies that could basically implode on themselves at any given moment. Whew! And then I ask myself "Why?"

So dear reader if any of you have an explanation I'd love to hear it. In my eternal quest to cram my brain full of knowledge and rationalizations this has been, by far, the most baffling mystery I've come across. So...why?