Dangit, I have no excuse for not posting yesterday. It seems that posting every day is really not going to work for me. But I’m posting some! Which is better than none! Which pre-supposes a rather high level of caring on your part that may or may not actually correspond to reality!
New topic! Last night I dreamed about getting a dog. Her name was Maggie, and she was a shelter dog, but a perfect, non-shedding, well-behaved, nice shelter dog. We’ve been talking about getting a dog for a few months now, and we haven’t pulled the trigger. If I’m going to be perfectly honest, I think that all of this dog-talk is really displaced baby talk. As you’re probably already aware, Mr. Shoe and I are the happy parents of one C. She’s sweet, reasonably well-mannered, loving, kind. She’s our girl. And for a long time, I’ve thought that she might be our only. Post-partum wasn’t easy for me. She didn’t sleep well (and I’m the kind of girl who needs her sleep to be, you know, not stark raving mad), I struggled with going back to work, I got mastitis 3 times (or was it 4? I can’t even remember), and Mr. Shoe and I were struggling with our marriage all at the same time. Yeah, that was some kind of party at our house. I still think she could be our only, and that our family would be perfect the way it is, and yet when I see lots of teeny babies around me, it’s hard not to wonder about what it would be like to have another. So my question is this: how do you know when/if you’re ready for another?
I’ve made laundry lists of pros (snuggly, tiny, cute, sibling for C, what’s not to like?) and cons (no sleep, diapers, higher cost of living, more tuition, less travel, no sleep, nooooo sleeeeep, turning C’s life upside down, feeling like I’m starting from square one again), and I don’t know. I feel like my job is to do the best I can by C. Make decisions in her best interest, and in our family’s best interest, and it’s really hard to think of a nebulous, not-yet-conceived person as necessarily in our best interest. Some people talk about feeling like their family is incomplete, and…I don’t know what they’re talking about. I have half-siblings who never lived with us when I was growing up, and I was essentially raised an only child, I have no concept of feeling like three is incomplete.
And yet, C is going to be 4 soon, and we always said if we were going to have more, they would be about 5 years apart which means we’re getting really close. And we can both argue it both ways. And I have no idea.
Sooo….maybe we need to just get a dog?
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