Have Baby, Will Charge

Today we discovered one of the hidden perks of havning a baby: Instant popularity!

This morning, feeling brave, my husband and me decided to go to the site of the national arts festival currently held in our hometown. This week-long festival includes lots and lots (and lots) of stalls with artsy stuff to see and buy, and lots of stages erected on which to hold shows with lots of chairs on which to sit and watch said shows.

So there we were, innocently thinking we'd be walking along the stalls with the baby in the stroller, enjoying the sights. Hah! We were soon shown the error of our naiveté, for walking through the massed crowds, it seemed that we were the sights. We couldn't walk two steps without being confronted by one (or more) crooning person (mostly female, though there was this weird moment with a teenage boy...) who wanted to drool all over our baby.

These people look completely normal, and I'm sure that were you to ask the people who know them, they'd be said to act perfectly normal as well. However, it seems that for some people, the sight of a baby is evidently a cue to become weird and, quite frankly, sometimes a little scary. Our baby was an instant celebrity, drawing crowds larger than some of the established artists preforming on the stages!

So, we decided that next year, we'll set up a tent and charge people to come in and look at the baby (any touching will cost extra). We'll do this in order to cash in on one of the other hidden perks of having children: Making money.