La Familia.

This is why I can't help but want to procreate with this man. Moments like this.

I should probably ask him about it....

Problema.

How......................?

How do you tell the person you have been with for 6 years, who has thought for those 6 years you didn't want children that you suddenly do?

Well, besides just saying it. I guess I need to come out of the baby-making closet.

Side note: I'm sort of stubborn, and I tend to hate eating my words when wrong. A lot. I'm trying to remind myself the advice of my lovely bff: "You are allowed to change your mind; you don't have to justify it to anyone." and also, "Who cares about them? (the people who will say, but I thought you didn't want kids? and I knew you'd change your mind!) They don't matter anyways." I love her. She is the part of my brain that all my insecurities tend to drown out a lot of the time.

I haven't exactly made a decision about it either. I did not wake up one day (like so many people told me I would) and know I wanted to make a baby. That stupid biological clock everyone talks about has began ticking. Ever so quietly in the back of my mind. Plus the fact that I am literally surrounded by babies and pregnant women everywhere I turn. And then they are all over Facebook as well. F*cking Facebook. I do not blame them, because we are at prime baby-makin' age, but it doesn't help my current predicament either.

I've never expected to wake up and just know. It was the same bullshit when I was wedding dress shopping. Everyone said, "You'll *just* know when its the right dress!" I never felt that, and then the dress I chose wasn't even what I ended up getting hitched in.
So yeah, I'm not expecting divine intervention and "just knowing" to happen. I'm much too logical for that.

The main reason I had thought in the past that I didn't want kids was my own awkward and sometimes painful adolescent experiences. I think the fact that I am finally coming to terms with them, forgetting the bad and remembering the good has caused this change of heart.

Plus my adorable niece is NO help. I mean she is the cutest thing in the world to me. Just look at her:

Showing off her sticking-her-tongue-out skills.

The Husband's new work schedule has him on nights right now, but Saturday he is off a bit earlier so I'm planning on dropping the bomb then. So much of me committing 100% to having a baby hangs on his reaction and if he wants to as well. I don't want to unless he wants to.

I'm doing it Saturday. It needs to be done. It must be done.

Logic vs. Intuition.

Logically, my college educated, sociology laden brain is screaming, "NOOOOOOO! Baby is not the best choice!" But then there are millions of years of evolution inside me, quietly nudging, "BAAAAAAABBBBBBBEEEEEEEE, makeabaaaaaaabbbbbeeeeeee".

And it is slowly driving me nuts, the push and pull of it all.

So, since I love a good list, a made a pros and cons list for (possible) procreation. In no apparent order:

Pros:
-Will shut up biological clock
-Tiny clothes, shoes and hats w/ears
-Someone to take care of me when I'm old
-cousin for Baby M. (my niece)
-Sibling for Kiddo and Little One
-Having a mini-me (or mini husband in the case of a boy) would be cool
-Getting to parent the way I want, not tip toe around the hard stuff like I do w/the girls because I never want them to say in anger, "you're not my mother!" I already know that.
-Never a boring moment
-hugs and cuddles
-finger painting possibilities
-Being told "you two would make such cute babies!" makes me curious...
-Giving my husband the chance to do the baby thing, one last time when he will be there for all the milestones he missed out on with the girls

Cons:
-Body never the same
-Mass amounts of laundry
-Taking care of for 18+ years
-Another person to bathe, clothe, feed etc...
-Taking Dad time away from Kiddo and Little One
-Babies turn into kids who turn into teenagers (who, in general, are annoying at best)
-College $
-childcare costs (I doubt we could afford me to do the SAHM thing, sadly and that opens up a whole other issue with me: why have kids if I'm going to pay someone else to basically raise them?)
-doctor's visits
-sticky hands/faces
-Lack of sleep
-loss of identity

This is where I stand on the topic. 12 cons versus 12 pros. Completely torn.



***

My husband and I were watching a TV show last night and one of the characters was getting a vasectomy. He mentioned, "If you are 100% sure you don't want kids we should look into that for me". I all could say was I don't know. Twice. And that is a lot different than how I used to respond to such a discussion. I should have laid it all out for him right then and there, but I clammed up. I'm not so good at eating my words, and after years and years of claiming, "I like babies, as long as they are other people's" I am partially hung up on having to do just that.

I know there is not perfect time to have a baby, but at this juncture of our lives, I couldn't feel it is more wrong: we live in a two bedroom apartment we are quickly outgrowing (w/o another human being taking up residence) and I am on the verge of enrolling in a graduate program where I work while my husband is switching jobs, again (that is a long story, ending with panic attacks and his hair falling out). We don't even have a washer and dryer, we are kicking it at the laundromat once a week.

I just wish the nagging feeling that something is missing would go away, but I am seriously starting to doubt if it will on its own.

Dear Uterus,

I would REALLY appreciate it if you stopped making me yearn for something I have adamantly opposed as long as I understood the concept. It is really annoying and it is giving me crazy ass dreams to boot.

I'm a logic person, uterus, and the cons of reproducing always out weigh the pros for me, so in case you didn't get the memo, I DON"T WANT TO USE YOU TO GROW LIFE, EVER.

So if you could please stop making me weepy over babies' photos (besides my niece, I'll allow that) it would really help me....also if you stopped nagging at the back of my brain day and night that would also be nice. The rest of my brain does not agree, nor does it appreciate the constant conflicting ideas.



Signed,
Mrs. Melberry

PS- I know you know what "they" say....but I'm on to you, so I'm going to contradict you til the cows come home.

Day TwentyEight:Prego.

What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?

According to my subconscious, I'd birth a boy child, be sad for a second about it being a boy and argue with my husband over the name (he wanted Tyler Joseph, I wanted Tyson Joseph, we would call him Ty for short, in the real-awake world, I don't even like either.) Yeah, I had my first real, live I'm pregnant dream this week. I woke up sweating and relieved. And freaked out, because of how happy I was in the dream.

I've been sitting on the procreation-is-not-for-me wagon since my girlfriends started talking about having babies when I was a teenager (not having them 16-and-pregnant style, but you know, after they married some dreamy guy, while wearing big poofy dress). I still feel this way. All the pressure to shape someone's personality and oh the worry....I can only imagine the anxiety. I worry enough about my step-daughters, and they are even babies anymore. I have a laundry list of reasons of why I don't want to be pregnant/do the mom thing and won't go out of my way to put myself in that situation, but if it were to happen unplanned is completely uncharted territory.

I used to shrug it off and simply say, I don't want kids, until people sort of got what I meant (or I just completely avoided answering if it were someone I didn't know well) but now....I have no friggen idea what I would do.

***

It has started simply enough. I admitted to myself I am jealous there are two women in the world who have something with my husband that I don't: offspring. It is in the back of my mind 95% of the time.

Then I remember my own childhood. The teasing and name calling and bullying and the self-hate that started at an age in the lower single digits. I don't want my (proverbial) kid to go through anything like that.

Then I remember how amazing it was to see my niece all tiny and pink minutes after she was born.

Then I think about this: what's the point of having kids and then paying someone else to watch them 40 hours a week? While at the same time thinking: I would lose my damn mind being a stay at home Mom....then I think, well, maybe I would work part time.....

Then I think of how amazing my husband is with his girls and my heart nearly explodes because it is something I really love about him.

Then I think about how fantastic our marriage is right now. And how a new study just came out that 90% of parents reported decreased marital satisfaction after having a baby. That doesn't really bode well with me.

I will admit to being a bit of a control freak. I like to plan things. Babies (once they are conceived) can only be planned in naming and preparing for them but there are so many variables: you could have a fantastic pregnancy where you feel amazing all the time or you could be puking for the first two trimesters (like my sister). Your baby could be pretty much perfect (like my niece) or a mean baby (like one of my sister's friends little one, I swear, she was scowling at my sister in a photo, no joke) you could be supremely happy in the months/year following delivering a child or plagued with postpartum depression.

So I guess I can say, in all honesty, I have absolutely no clue what I would do if I got knocked up tomorrow. And since I've been on the pill for years now....the real question is: what would I do if I WANTED to get pregnant tomorrow? And the real answer is freak the eff out, cry, and tell my husband. That is all that is for sure.

Day Nine: Drifted.

Someone you didn't want to let go, but just drifted.

Without a doubt, this is my sorority big. (Yeah, I was active in a sorority for about a year and a half in college, deal with it.) She was/is the sweetest thing in the world, and we became friends that hung out all the time pretty fast. Once she graduated and had a really bad break-up all at the same time, she sort of disappeared for a while. Then she moved farther away, and farther still and got married and I saw her less and less. The last time I saw her was April, when she was about 6 months pregnant (and adorable, since she is about 5''2 and 115 pounds soaking wet) and now she's a mom and I haven't even met the little guy. Which I think about all the time.

We had some really great times together, and I wish we saw each other more, but older I get, the more life seems to get in the way of things.

Revisions.

Most of the time, I appear to be a genuinely happy person. I have good friends, family and all that jazz but more so than not, I've got a lot of dark and twisty (Grey's Anatomy fans know what I'm talking about here) going on beneath the surface.

I have an insistent and neverending urge to worry and be constantly anxious about damn near everything around me. It's exhausting. It makes me crabby and one giant Negative Nancy when it surfaces, usually around events I have little to no control over. I feel like its my masochistic job to carry these worries around, constantly rolling over them in my head. It's ridiculous, yes, but telling me not to worry is like telling a dog not to bark. It's a waste of air.

So when I wrote this post last week, I was in full dark and twisty mode. There was no light at the end of the tunnel, I was anxious and worried to say the least.

Over the weekend, I had a talk with my husband about everything and I finally got how he is feeling about all of this out of him. And the weight seems a little less heavy and I seem a little less worried.

The I don't want babies of my own thing is a lot more complex than ever....and I'm trying to figure out the best way own it, and not let it bother me when people try and tell me, "oh that could/will change blah blah blah" because I'm going to hear it for the next 20 years. And I'm already sick of explaining myself. In a few years I can just start lying and saying I can't have kids...that should shut people up a bit faster on the subject.

Maybe if I can get over my own issues from childhood (try being chubby with gigantic early 90's glasses, frizzy hair AND a speech impediment and NOT coming out scarred) I may want to procreate, but right now, the thought of creating a little person to possibly go through what I did just seems wrong.

Niece( !! )

Lillian Lane Mullins Born at 4:28a on 4.28.10 Weighing in at 5 pounds 9 ounces and measuring 19 inches long.

First peek we had of her.

She looks a lot like my sister, its crazy.

So tiny!

It's too early to be up!

I was pretty much exstatic.

My mom was beaming.

She's so pretty.

I won't lie, I was half expecting My niece's birth to trigger my urge to reproduce, but no such thing has happened. I am completely in love with her....as my niece that I can spoil and cuddle and keep for weekends and bring presents. I'm exhausted, because I was up for about 30 hours and then slept for 4 and went back for another visit, then slept for 10 and here I am, but it was totally worth being there for it all. My sister is doing great and even though she was born at 36 weeks, to a type 1 diabetic 35 year old mom Lilly Bird is happy and healthy as a one day old baby can be. And I honestly never understood how people can say newborns look like anyone, because they are so tiny and old man looking, until now. This baby seriously looks like my sister, its crazy.

So my Step-Daughter's Birthday is April 27 and my Niece's Birthday is April 28. We are screwed when it comes to having money throughout the month of April from this point on :)

Baby. (NO I'm not prego)

My sister and I had a late blooming friendship that started when I was about 18 and she was 28. Back then, she was sometimes more like a second mom than a sister, but now that I am older, we are more like equals, although she still has that older sibling wisdom that comes in handy. (Plus she has worked for the children services branch of social work for over a decade, and that comes in handy from time to time as well, with my Maury Povich type baggage laden Husband. Bonus!)

Us at my Bachelorette, cheesin' it up.

That is the main reason I am borderline-crazy excited about the birth of her daughter (let's call her Baby M), plus I may not want my own, but babies sort of melt my heart. The fact that I am officially this little bebe's aunt adds to the excitement. I married in to 3 nephews and a neice, and although I adore all of them, its slightly different this time, because ITS MY SEEEESTER!

At her work shower, she was about 6 1/2 months here

Yesterday I went down for a visit. They have gotten the room all ready for Baby M. and also renovated their bathroom and I needed to see both, along with Sister's growing belly. I had also been collecting random things since March to give her, since I can't help myself when it comes to baby clothes/accessories. Magnify that by it being my sister and I'm pretty much constantly buying something for the not-even-born-yet child. There's a good chance she may end up being the only from-birth grandchild for both sets of her grandparents. (I say from birth, since my mom has already taken to buying Kiddo and Little One gifts whenever appropriate plus random things whenever she feels like it.) Needless to say, Baby M. will not want for anything, but I know she won't be spoiled rotten either, at least not from my sister and brother-in-law, they are both going to be awesome parents. Me? I'm going to cuddle her, buy her things, even babysit occassionally and when she's older, keep her on weekends and then give her back til next time. I made one small change to Baby M's room:

There was a random dress hanging where the best onesie ever now resides, a close up:

At least I hope she will. Only a few more weeks til she's here. Plus I'll be conveniently in my hometown for my bff's wedding around the time Sister thinks they are going to induce her, if Baby M doesn't decide its time to meet the world before then. Life is pretty unpredictable, so either way, I'll be meeting my new lil neice real soon. Who's ridiculously excited about this fact? That would be me :)

What day is it?

Life goes on. I keep going. There are a million and a half things going on for me right now. I've stopped caring when I can't remember what day it is right away in the morning time. If its still dark out and the alarm is going off, it means get out of bed and exercise. If I wake up on my own to pee, its probably about 7:30 and I forgot to turn on said alarm or its the weekend and its time to go back to sleep. If the sun is shining through my windows, its probably the weekend, which means I need to get up at some point and exercise before I do anything else.

I went to Chicago for work. It was fun times. It has also added to my confusion and made it painful to come back to work, but whatever.

Operation fit into dress is in full swing. I got real worried this morning (I'm having a I-feel-like-a-beached-whale-I'm-so-fat day, so that doesn't help) but I'm going to calm myself by calling the alteration place that did my wedding dress and see when I could bring it by, just in case there is something to be done to give me some wiggle room.

My niece should be here the day before my bff gets married. Which means I probably won't be there at the hospital, but I will get to go visit Sunday before going back home. I am still buying adorable tiny things for her. I love her already, and I haven't even met her.

I could not be happier for all these life changing events going on with people I hold so dear. Summer will be even sweeter this year though, because I'll have some serious down time starting Memorial Day weekend.

Pause.

Apartment Makeover has come to a standstill for various reasons:

1. I'm busy....like, reeeeeally busy for the next two months.

2. We are (like always) tight on money which isn't anything new, but its way easier to plan and execute when money is not a part of the equation.

3. I can't seem to decide what to do first...I keep jumping from room to room in my head and since I can't choose where to start, I choose to not start anything. (Lame I know)

4. I want to do the (awful) task of re-organizing our filing system for bills/mail before I do anything else, but I can't seem to force myself into doing so. This, in turn, effects our "land strip" area which would make me SO happy to clear out the clutter from. It is the first place I see when I get home and the last place I look when I leave..but still hasn't happened. Le sigh.

5. I've been feeling pretty.......overwhelmed by my own life choices lately*. Which is awful timing, since I'm so busy with two amazing and happy milestones of two amazing ladies in my life. This past weekend has proved I can at least push all my BS to the side when it counts the most since both showers were a hit (I had bridal on Saturday for bff and baby on Sunday for my best (only) sister. I am so ridiculously happy for both of them....I can't wait for wedding day for bff and birth day for sister.

I can't decide what is the best option to fix my job/career/go back to school dilemma, so much like choosing a starting point for redecorating the apartment, I choose to do nothing**. Which doesn't help me at all. Meanwhile, I'm stuck in this absolutely crap (besides the pay) job.

I've been channeling this mantra lately, along with plotting to buy a large print of it as soon as possible:
Cause, really, what else am I supposed to do?

*Strictly job/career related. My Husband is the one thing I know I chose correctly in life.
**Besides frantically search, on an almost daily basis, for another job I'm qualified for which pays about the same as what I'm making now. I've discovered I'm overpaid for my qualifications, or at least that's how it looks to me.

Letter.

Dear Little One,

You are not so little anymore. You'll be four years old on July 5! You will always be the younger daughter; the second daughter, but you will always be your father's daughter. Today your paternal grandma (your daddy's mommy) who hasn't seen you in almost 3 years either, is meeting you and your mother for lunch. I hope you like her and I hope your grandma can talk some sense into your mother. We want to see you so badly.

Your daddy wants to be in your life even though the circumstances and events over the short time you've been on this planet have kept him from doing that. I want you to know he is a good person, and he tried to do what was right, even though some people made that very difficult for him. I want to be your step-mommy, too. I remember the first night your daddy had you over night. I don't think I'd ever been around a baby that small in my life and I remember thinking, "wow you are so tiny and pink."

I remember the last time I saw you. We were at your paternal grandparents house, with your older half sister (aka Kiddo) and her cousin. You were a bit fussy after eating and wouldn't go down for a nap. So I held you until you fell asleep. I didn't know that was the last time I would see you, and I think about that day often while I wonder how you have changed and grown since then.

We can't change the past and we'll never get back the 2 1/2 years we've missed, but hopefully in the near, near future we can start over and be a part of your life (and you a part of ours) in a more permanent sort of way.

Lots of Love,

Your Step-Mommy.

Little One, date unknown, but more current than any photo we have. Sent from her mom, to Husband's mom.

Crazy-busy.

This past weekend I didn't get much apartment makeover type things accomplished because I was doing 10 million other things and driving all over the greater Miami Valley. Between Saturday and Sunday I did the following:

-gave a test for my work at our branch campus
-helped a friend move
-got a hair cut
-helped the same friend get settled since I have mad organizational skills and get some weird joy out of turning chaos into order.
- showered 2x on Sunday (really, I don't know how this fit in w/the time change and all)
-drove to hometown and:
-finished planning my best friend's Bridal Shower (which is THIS Saturday) and the Bachelorette in May
-Went to Target
-Visited my preggers sister at my mom's house, twice (once before Target trip, once after wedding-stuff planning)

This weekend has convinced me while I love driving a compact car the next time its car purchasing time, I would like something a bit more roomy. Claustrophobia can set in when you spend 50% of your weekend driving around in crappy weather. I would looooooooove the newly redesigned Honda Insight, but lets not get our hopes up.

I'm hoping to maybe at least get our bills organized into the expandable file I bought almost two weeks ago sometime this week. Other than that, I'm on Bridal/Baby Shower stand by, with both happening on Saturday and Sunday.

When did I get a life?

Over?

What happened in February 2010? Did all the snow we received somehow speed up the space-time continuum or something? It seems like things went by really fast. March is so busy for me. Every weekend is a social commitment or a work one, or like the 13th, both when I am working in the morning, getting my hair (an extremely much needed)cut then helping a friend move.

The following weekend is my bridal shower/baby shower extravaganza in my hometown. I'm co-hostessing the bridal on Saturday and the baby on Sunday. Only I would have my best friend and my best (ie: only) sister getting married and birthing the first grandchild of our family in a one week time span in May. Hopefully little Miss Audrey (the favorite name thus far) takes after her mommy, uncle an aunt and comes two weeks early. My sister keeps telling me since she's high-risk (diabetic and 35, which is the starting point of "advanced maternal age" there's a term to make older mommies feel awesome!) it will be a c-section and scheduled, yay for modern medicine. Whenever she arrives, I will be there. I have a niece and nephews from marrying into them, but I was never around a lot for the itty bitty baby parts of them, plus my sister has wanted a baby for a long time, so I'm very excited for them as well.

It's going to be crazy, but I am looking forward to having so much going on again. Being busy doesn't leave time for me to dwell upon how unsatisfied I am with work/career related things. I'm stuck since I want to go back to school, to do something fulfilling and way different than what I do now, but I can't figure out how to pay for it. More student loans are not an option. So I'm trying not to dwell upon things while slowly jumping through the admission hoops in vain hope that once I'm interviewed/accepted I can get them to grant me a tuition scholarship. In a perfect world, right?

***
It stays light out a little bit later every night, and soon it will be consistently warm enough for me to walk in the evenings, something I think about doing every day, but the snow and cold temperatures keep me from. I don't think I've pined for Spring so hard in my entire life. The amount of time the snow has hung around this year compared to the last few seems never-ending so I think that may have something to do with things.

In total random news: I've been married 6 months. Craziness!

Married life.

Growing up in the good Catholic family that was mine, my parents stayed together (although there were many times I feared they'd divorce, due to Dad liking the sauce a bit too much, but that's a whole other fish to fry). This created a vision of "married" in my little developing psyche that my grown up marriage doesn't coincide with at all.

A bit of history:

My parents had already been married 12 years when I was born and were 35 with a 10 year old and a 3 year old. They were tired. Dad worked long hours and Mom bounced from part-time jobs that included Midnights and weekends for years. They did what was expected. They got married (at an older than average age for their time period: married in 1972 when they were both 24) and started a family. Somehow they raised us right and there were no babies out of wedlock or major let downs: both my sister and I graduated college and my brother is a Sergeant in the U.S. Army.

Fast forward to now. Married for five and a half months. I don't want children and we have Husbands 7 year old (and estranged 3 1/2 year old) to make up a very different kind of family. I still don't feel how kid version of myself imagined things would feel, mostly because I don't think you can fathom what adulthood feels like in general. More so, because I'm living a different experience than I watched as a youngster.

We have good days and bad days, like any couple. To this day, whenever we have a disagreement/argument (whatever you want to call it), it is the only emotional situation where I feel like I could hurl (everything else almost always triggers emo-eating). When things are bad, it only makes me want to fix things, learn from it and move on. When things are good, they are really good, like, I almost want to slap myself because I wonder how I lucked out and found someone so made for me. It's slightly nauseating.

Step-parenting, at its worst, feels like attempting to walk on egg shells that have been strewn across a semi-frozen lake (to me at least) but most of the time it isn't like that. Most of the time its nice to be important to someone other than Husband on a regular basis and to take pride in her accomplishments. She is a great kid, and that makes things so easy. Whenever Little One comes back into the picture, who knows how things will ensue.

I still don't know about babies. I love them, and my sister is having one in May which I couldn't be more excited for, but I just don't know if I want to share my husband any more than I already do. Call me selfish and weird, but its the damn truth. Plus the whole shaping of an individual's psyche freaks me out. Add in the expectation of child-rearing once married (why? we aren't farmers and over-population is sort of a problem these days) and I just don't feel the need to procreate.

I never had a relationship that lasted more than 6 months before I met my husband. I feel like I could spend the rest of our lives enjoying that (along with our kitty and maybe a dog, if we ever get a house) and investing our time and energy in each other, and his kids he already has.

I know, I know, I can hear you saying, "you will just wake up one day and want a baby of your own" and maybe I will, but for now, I'm going to spoil my niece that is coming in May, focus on my marriage and help raise my step-kids, and I'm perfectly okay with that.

It's the most wonderful time....

For a beer...I mean, of the year, hehehe.

The Johnson's took "getting into the spirit" just a little too far, I think Rick Moranis may have had something to do with it as well.

Something is very different about Christmas when you have kids in your life. For me, I've turned into a misty eyed sap who cries at the thought of sentimental things (including the montage scene near the end of Fred Claus with all the kids opening presents and the elves watching via the magic snowglobe...I seriously almost teared up as I typed this, I'm a freak).

Although this isn't the first side effect of kids and christmas...it is also A LOT more expensive and with the ever increasing technology of toys, I'm sure things can only get worse. Kiddo is requesting something I remember asking Santa for, and now that I'm on the other side of things, I know exactly why I didn't get my American Girl Doll that year. $95 for a book and a Doll?! Really? For a doll that doesn't do anything besides create the need for clothes, accessories and furniture? Talk about a status symbol in kid form. Now, if we had more money, I'm sure I would have obliged...I remember how much I wanted one, but that just isn't the case. Luckily, Kiddo won't be disappointed since her mother is planning on getting her one, but it won't be from Santa. She only puts small presents as "from Santa" because she wants the credit for the expensive ones. Isn't she just a lovely human being?

Everything Husband and I get Kiddo is "from Santa" at our house....she's 7, you don't need to buy her affection, especially if you give it to her like a normal human being should but I digress...
Either way, Christmas (Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Solstice or whatev else you may celebrate) is fun with kids around, and I feel lucky to have married into a family o' children. I am also very excited to take Kiddo to a local outdoor shopping mall to see Santa, Mrs. Claus and Reindeer in a couple weeks. I did my homework and found out this shopping mall only hires Santa's with REAL beards. Kiddo is smart, and we are almost sure she is about to figure things out. Our trip to see real bearded Santa a week from Friday could go either way.

Totally unrelated: Who is sick of hearing about Tiger Woods? This girl, that's who!!

PostSecret goodie.

Okay....ANYONE would be terrified of having children if this is what they picture.


It spoke to me, for obvious reasons displayed here and here but also created a creepy image in my brain and I had to re-post it and creep out others. Head over to postsecret for more random, heartfelt and just plain weird tidbits.

Oh and ps-I'm going to finish my Master's by August....because I love a good challenge...ie: writing a Master's Thesis AND planning a wedding AND being Matron of Honor to a wedding in the works for next May. It should make for good blogging...or so I hope!

Seven.

My pal Tabs gave me this pretty:

and tagged me to create a "favorite seven things" so here goes (in no particular order)

1. Fiancé. He truly is my penguin aka lobster aka soul mate and ying to my yang.
2. Sleeping on freshly laundered sheets.
3. Giggling babies....they are infectous and you can't help but giggle with them.
4. The post-workout high. It is what keeps me coming back to the gym every day lately.
5. Lazy Sundays.
6. Chipotle....its like heaven in American-Mexican food form (to me at least).
7. Clothes shopping for Kiddo...I can't seem to buy myself much of anything these days, but I love buying her clothes.

I'm supposed to tag other peeps to do the same...but I'm pretty much a loser and only have the one follower who is the person who tagged me...so any secret stalkers out there feel free to make yourself known and post your 7 favorite things in a comment.

Coming up later: This week's To-Do list.

Denial?

I love babies. Other people's babies, that is.

Chloe Ann: most laid back baby ever.

This brings me around to the topic I've visited before: not wanting my own little bundle of joy. I love cuddling them, dressing them and playing with them...I don't even mind feeding them, but then I give them back to their parents to do the dirty work and the actual parenting. I don't know if I would ever consciously choose to create something I would be responsible for rearing. I don't think I'm that selfless; I don't think I would be very good nor would I enjoy it as much as some people do.

This is why I've always taken great precaution to keep accidents from happening, and will continue to do so. Five years ago, it would have been pretty much the worst thing I could have imagined. Now, it is almost as if I wouldn't know what I would do until I was actually in the situation. I'm about to get married and I'll be 25 this September. Some people would even go as far as to call me an adult, even though most of the time, I don't feel like one.

I sort of hope to have this figured out in the next three years or so, because although I'm not sure if I'm up for having kids or not, I do know if I want to have them, it has to be in the next few years. I don't want to have a relationship like my mom and I did....not really liking each other until I moved out.

Thoughts about...babies*GASP*

(Disclaimer: due to this being the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I have just about nothing to do at work, plus this place is deserted so I'm extra bored, thus explaining the random and multiple blogs)


I was cyber-stalking various females I knew in another life (ie: high school) and realized a lot of them have reproduced. Which is fine. What perturbs me about this is how as I was looking at pictures and things, I feel like I am missing the train on this life experience; in other words, I almost feel jealous of these girls. Which really throws me off. I've always found myself saying "I love kids, I just don't want my own" but I am starting to wonder if I am wrong about this.

Then my childhood comes flooding back to me; I had the best parents in the world, but was a very unhappy child inside. Kids can be a-holes and superficial, I don't wish their ridicule upon anyone. I often wonder how different my self-esteem would be now if I would have looked different as a kid. Isn't that horrible? That, along with the annoyance level sometimes created by kids, has always kept me on the straight and narrow about not wanting them.

Although the thought of giving bf (who will eventually be Husband) the chance to do the kid thing the more "traditional" way makes me smile and I know he is great dad, I just don't know if I truly want to. Plus as far as he knows, I don't want them and as far as I know he doesn't want another...but who knows.

Plus there is the whole swallowing my pride and admitting I was mistaken all those years I said I didn't want kids to all the people who said things like "that will change when you meet the right person". But that isn't even what has caused the (semi) change of heart on the subject. When I first met him, and actually up until a couple months ago, I was still 100% not wanting to reproduce. Then bf's sister has to go and have the cutest and happiest baby known to man, and its all been down hill from there. Plus I've grown so fond of Kiddo and I really do miss and am heartbroken about us not being able to see Little One that I think I could do it for myself some day maybe. I dunno.

I do feel better spewing all of these thoughts out here. So woo for that.