Comment Roundup, Pt. 1

In the style of the estimable Daniel Davies, I'm going to link to a couple comments I've made elsewhere recently.

First up, Matthew Yglesias cites a study suggesting that, subjectively, 20 is the midpoint of a typical adult's life. In other words, 0-20 and 20-7x seem to take about as long. Setting aside the merits of that claim, Matt makes the comment,

This explains, I suppose, the well-known phenomenon of the annoying relative or other adult acquaintance proclaiming that a child is "growing up so fast" while the child feels himself to be growing up slowly.

To which my response was:

But about the "growing up so fast," I'll testify as a still-fairly-new father. Everyone who already has kids (esp. ones who are 10 or more) tells you, every day, to "enjoy it, because they grow up so fast." And it only took me about 4 months to get their meaning. Kids are changing all the time - not just physically, but in every way. And I will never, ever again get to spend time with my daughter-at-6-months. And she was a great kid. I miss her. Even though every age so far has been better than the preceding one, we nonetheless loved her at those preceding ages, and it's bittersweet to know that they're gone, forever. This has also given me insight to obsessive recordation. I've always disdained the parent-with-videocam, but now I see the value. I know that soon, and for the rest of my life, I'll want to be able to see exactly what she was like - how she spoke and moved - each step of the way.