"It's kind of a good measuring stick for us, because here we are at college and all we grow at college is a few inches around the waist, but here are these kids and they're growing inches and learning how to eat," he says.

The only time Sofia bothered Ghalib and his roommates was when she and her peers cried and shouted while participating in Radcliffe's daycare program, located just under his former window in DeWolfe.

"She's in the daycare that would wake us up in the morning," Ghalib says. "It bothered you at first, but you look out the window, and you see them toddling around, and it makes you smile."

Sozi C. Sozinho '97, a Leverett resident, says the young children who run and play in the house courtyard remind him of his three younger siblings at home.

"You see the kids, and they remind you a little of the youth you had before Harvard," Sozinho says.

The community feeling extends beyond personal interaction, says the head of one house.

"It's a very rich environment to grow up in," says Leigh G. Hafrey '73, co-master of Mather House, who is raising Nathaniel, 9, and Benjamin, 4, with house Master Sandra A. Naddaff '75. "You've got all these smart, accomplished people who are almost always very generous with their time and their attention."

For instance, Nathaniel has become interested in World War II. "That's the sort of thing I think undergraduates respond to," Hafrey says.

Sometimes, children can even add to the financial resources of a house, as infant Alana Yang, daughter of tutors Malia Preble and Scott H. Yang '87, once did at a Kirkland House Dutch Auction.

"Students convinced my husband to put Alana up for auction--holding her--it kind of eases their stress during exam time, holding a little tiny baby," Preble says. "The bidding started at $5, and it went up to I think $15. Mostly men were bidding."

The man who won the bids held Alana, now a year and a half, for 45 minutes, 15 more than the agreed-upon length of time.

"When I told him he owed extra money to House Committee, he [said], 'But she was sleeping for 15 minutes!" Preble says."

And most parents say the obvious: It's never hard to find a babysitter among hundreds of Harvard undergraduates.

"Of course, one benefit of living in a house is virtually unlimited expert babysitting," says Tim Markey, a resident tutor in Lowell House, who is raising Claudia, 3 1/2, and Seamus, six months, with his wife Lorraine.

But another tutor disagrees.