On Babies

 Babies are small, but they grow quickly.  Once they grow a
certain amount, they are not called babies any more, but toddlers or
children, although some people, usually close relatives, continue to
refer to them as babies until they start kindergarten.  Most
people consider that the shelf life of a baby is around 18
months.  After this a baby is a toddler.

Babies are cute, and they have fascinating brains, but they are also
annoying because they yell very loud and require constant close
supervision in order to prevent them from damaging themselves by doing
stupid things, because they have not yet learned which things are
stupid and which are not.  They learn very quickly, because the
learning parts of their brains work better when they are babies than
when they are adults, but it can seem slow to adults who have already
learned the things babies are trying to learn.   Also some things
that would not be stupid for an adult, such as eating a grape or
descending a staircase, are stupid for a baby and can result in death
if they are not watched all the time.  When you have to watch them
all the time, they can get boring, although they are very interesting
in smaller doses.  Also you have to clean them all the time. 
Babies require more cleaning than adults, even though they are so much
smaller and have less hair.  If a mother is breastfeeding a baby,
which there are very few acceptable excuses not to do, the mother
should be careful what she eats and drinks, because what she eats gets
into her milk and may not be safe for the baby to consume, even if it
is safe for the mother to consume.  This also applies when babies
are located inside their mothers’ uteri.

When babies are still inside their mothers’ uteri, they can cause
trouble by kicking, turning themselves around feet first, strangling
themselves with the umbilical cord, weighing a lot, and eventually
insisting on coming out into the world via an aperture which is really
much too small for them.  Some mothers find that the mere
existence of a baby, no matter how small, inside their uteri causes
trouble, in the sense of worry regarding what will happen when the baby
starts to show or when the baby emerges from the vaginal
aperture.  These mothers may choose to prevent the baby from
growing any bigger by having it surgically removed.  There is
widespread controversy over whether this hurts the baby, although most
people who argue that it does not hurt the baby do so by arguing that
the baby is not a baby at that point, but merely an object which has
the potential and vector velocity to become a baby, much as an acorn is
not an oak tree, and an egg is not a chicken, and a baby is not a
toddler.  They argue that the correct term for a baby before it is
born, while it is located inside the uterus and takes in oxygen and
nourishment via its connection to the mother’s body, is “fetus,” much
as the correct term for a baby after it begins to walk is “toddler,”
and after it passes puberty “adolescent.”  Therefore, they
argue  that actions which it would be inappropriate to take with a
baby, such as dismemberment with sharp objects, are appropriate to take
with a fetus, much as actions which it would be inappropriate to take
with an adolescent, such as placing an adult female breast in its
mouth, are appropriate to take with a baby.  Others argue that
location and method of oxygen intake is inessential in the definition
of a baby, and that dismemberment with sharp objects is inappropriate
for a human being at any stage of development.  People tend to
feel very strongly on both sides of this debate.

When non-debated, non-uterus-located babies die, it is almost
universally regarded to be a tragic event.  When adults die, the
grief of survivors is often qualified by the quality of the adult in
question.  For example, if an adult who has murdered hundreds of
people die, some other adults consider that death a cause for
celebration, not grief.  Other adults consider that all human life
has worth, and therefore it is inappropriate to celebrate any human
death, no matter what reprehensible acts the dead person has committed,
but even these adults are likely to feel more grief over the death of a
person who has acted for good than over the death of a person who has
acted for evil.  However, because of the very helplessness that
makes them both annoying and endearing, babies are unable to act very
much at all, and because they are so cute, and because most people are
optimists at heart, people grieve for the lost potential for good
instead of celebrating the lost potential for evil.  Mothers
usually love their babies very much, so people also grieve for mothers
who have lost their babies, because this is widely acknowledged to be
one of the greatest emotional pains an adult woman can
experience.  Other baby-related griefs for mothers include babies
who are born sick, deformed, or mentally deficient.  Sometimes the
surgery to remove a baby or fetus from the uterus is performed in order
to prevent the birth of a baby who is likely to be born dead, sick,
deformed, or mentally deficient.  Other mothers prefer to care for
such babies as best they can before and after they are born.

Some people think playing classical music to babies enhances their
ability to learn things.  This is known as “The Mozart Effect,” or
sometimes “Baby Einstein.”  Einstein was a very intelligent and
pleasant person whose contributions to human understanding resulted in
great technological advances, and also in nuclear weapons. 
Mozart, on the other hand, was a drunken, philandering ne’er-do-well
who died a pauper at a young age after composing an astonishing amount
of fabulously good music.  This goes to show that you never can
tell.