I’ve never been a highly maternal person. Babies? Eh, I could take them or leave them. I’m certainly no child snatcher, and growing up I was more likely to petsit than babysit. So I’m sure it comes as a surprise to some of my friends that I’m currently in baby-carrying mode.

For the first few years of our marriage, Matt was aware that I would have been cool going my whole life not having kids. Things were fun just the way they were, and I didn’t really need or want anything different. Plus, HELLO!? Blood and gore of childbirth? Not my cup of tea.

So I had set up in my mind some goals that needed to be accomplished before I would even sit down and consider having kids. I’m a little hyper-anal about financial preparedness, so much of it hinged on that. Matt needed to be DONE with graduate school and his certification coursework. Likewise, all post-graduate education needed to be paid for in full. And if he wanted a Ph.D. there needed to be a plan for how it would be achieved and how it would be paid for. We needed to be in an affordable house, or in the process of buying one. And we needed to be able to live on his salary alone, so that work I do can be icing on the cake and not a major stressor in our life.

I’m also a big believer in that you should know WHY you want a child before you bring one into the world. That you should weigh everything very carefully before going out and getting yourself pregnant. And the thought of a little doll-sized human to dress up in funny clothes is not reason enough. These things are HIGH-MAINTENANCE, and EXPENSIVE. There is no guarantee they will ever love you back, in fact they will most certainly shout “I HATE YOU!” on a number of occasions throughout their life.

Last Christmas my checklist was getting pretty close to being completed, and I realized that the time was coming for us to start really truly considering kids. The timing was becoming right and the move to Nashville made it even more right. So coming up with my reason for wanting children was the only thing left, and it came and made sense and I couldn’t shake it.

I want more Matt around.

Over the past year I have fallen in love with him all over again in a way I can’t quite explain. I can’t get enough time spent with him, I can’t get enough of his cheesy jokes, I can’t get enough of his very capable Mattliness. And I just want more and more of him. More little Matts running around that I can love on. More loud laughing, and more love of sci-fi, and more blue eyes.

Although I do hope Little Friend gets my one good trait – the million dollar smile I got from my Dad.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Babies!, Marriage, Opinionatrix. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.