It'll be fun

I think I still remember my first comment about children to my husband, who was in graduate school at the time. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "You are almost out of grad school. I have worked my posterior off for almost five years, and I am ready to have kids. What do you think? Kids are great! It'll be fun!"

Husband: Deafening silence.

Me: "I have a degree in Child Psychology now. How hard can it be? Kids are great! It'll be fun!"

Husband: "I thought you wanted a horse."


I am sure, due to my advanced age and the process of deteriorating memory that my kids fondly call "Mom's revisionist history," that my little recap may be somewhat deficient in important details, but the gist of it is there. Needless to say, in my clock-is-ticking-better-have-a-baby-now frame of mind, the road was clear and first baby arrived about a year later.

That first "baby" now wears a man's size 10 1/2 shoe and assures me every chance he gets that, at the impressive age of 12, he towers over me by an inch and a half. I assure him frequently in return that towering over my vertically challenged physique is no great accomplishment. What is it about the preteen male that makes it their life goal to rest their arm on mom's shoulder and gloat about how short she is? Maybe I just have "Short Mom's Attitude."

A beautiful girl arrived exactly 2 years and 8 months, to the day, after that first little blessing. We were so excited; now we had the complete set! We bought our first house, only three bedrooms (because we were "done") and settled into the domestic tranquility of raising two perfect, I-have-a-degree-in-Child-Psychology children. Hee, hee, hee.

Three "This is Fun" years later I almost drove off a bridge when I called the lab from a cell phone for the official results of the I-can't-possibly-be-pregnant-I-used-birth-control pregnancy test. Yup. Child number three joined us eight months later and, as two kids bounced on my hospital bed and my husband cuddled our new little bologna loaf, he said, "Don't worry about three kids, honey. It'll be fun!"