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Notes -
I would say that the overall experience has definitely been positive, but it also brings a lot of not-always-fun tasks like late-night doctor visits, dirty diapers, and scheduling parent-teacher conferences. Doing things together is lots of fun, as is watching them learn and grow, but I'm still learning to work with the way the interaction is almost entirely interrupt-driven and impossible to schedule ("I fell down, I need a band-aid right now!").
As someone who's taken care of pets, my experience is that it's also rather interrupting. Either it's an emergency (cat throws up) or it's something that makes me have to put down something I'd rather be doing lest I procrastinate into near-infinity (walking the dog).
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