I think I’ve said this before, but after all the heart-melting love, the next best thing about being a parent is getting to watch your child learn. It is so cool! I never realized before that you could actually observe the process of *learning*.

Right now, over the last maybe 2 days, Noah has been learning the idea of counting. I can’t tell you how many things he’s announced that there were TWO of — spoons, arms, balls, cars….

This morning, after he’d been nursing for awhile (guess what else there are two of?) and he started playing with the buttons on my nightshirt, I decided to see what he’d do with the idea of 3.

So I rearranged myself to make sure he could see all 3 buttons (they’re decorative, not functional, and near the collar) and carefully counted them. OH!MY!GOD! Three is even more exciting than two.

But not as exciting as GoGo. Whom we are not watching until AFTER we get dressed and wake up Mommy. I’m sorry sweetie, but GoGo is still sleeping. Let’s change your diaper and get ready for school! No, we’re not going to watch GoGo until after that. I’m sorry you’re upset, but we’re changing your diaper now.

Sorry. Distracted by my early morning conversation. Why is it, do you suppose, that changing the diaper provokes so much fury and upset every single morning?

I’ve been thinking a lot about politics recently, mostly in the context of all the hoopla around immigration. I don’t get to think about this until I’m driving and listening to NPR, but that’s a good 45 minutes each day, and last week I went to the State Dems annual dinner and heard John Edwards speak (not to be confused with John Edward), so politics is reemerging in my mind again recently.

Anyway. My point is that I just don’t understand the people who want to build a great big fence, either literally or metaphorically, around the US. I mean really! This country would be completely and utterly different if it weren’t for the labor and the dreams of immigrants.

My own grandparents were immigrants — my grandmother came here with her sister, and an 8th grade education. She worked as a nanny, a waitress, and a retail clerk, luckily marrying my grandfather along the way. He was an engineer with a master’s degree, so they had it easier than a lot of immigrant families. But they — like so many others — lived the immigrant American dream. Of their three children, one is a doctor, one is a teacher, and one a politician.

I don’t think most so-called illegal immigrants are much different from my grandparents.

If there are people we’re specifically worried about, we should certainly investigate them. But I don’t think there is any practical way to round up 11 million people living and working in the United States and send them “home” without our becoming a police state with a severely damaged economy.

The fact of the matter is, very few US citizens are willing to take the agricultural jobs that provide the rest of us with affordable food.

More than anything else, though, what troubles me is how mean the anti-immigration people are. Yesterday morning on NPR, there was a sound bite from a woman representing one of those right-wing anti-immigration organizations. When asked about what should happen when illegal immigrants are arrested and separated from their US citizen children, she basically said, “Too bad! Those people should have thought about that before having children.”

Because people having sex are usually thinking about what might happen to them a year or more down the road if they happen to get pregnant and have children and get arrested. Maybe those moms should have had abortions once they realized they were pregnant. Oh wait! That would be having an abortion — surely Ms Right Wing Meanie wasn’t encouraging that. The undocumented immigrants need better abstinence education.

The funniest line I have heard in the entire discussion was from John McCain (whom I do not trust one bit, but he is funny). When he was told that Mitt Romney was criticizing his immigration bill, McCain commented about Romney (who has talked publicly about being a rabbit hunter and also admitted to hiring a lawn care company that employed undocumented immigrants from Guatemala), “Maybe his solution will be to get out his small-varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his lawn.”