My babies turned 17 months old yesterday, and I forgot. I guess that is why we all eventually stop counting in months and turn to years. Turning 30 was brutal enough, how'd you like to say that you just turned 364 months old? Just too many months to mark it all.
We just got home from another trip to Grandma's house, wherein I am reminded that when left to my own devices with my children, I frequently fail to make the grade. In December we went to Grandma's with Crawlers and came home with Walkers. This trip we went to Grandma's with finger feeders, and came home with children now skilled with cutlery. We were brave enough to take them to the fancy schmancy Chuck-a-Rama Buffet where the use of tableware is particularly prolific, and strangers complimented our prodigy yunguns on their mad fork skills. Thanks Grandma! :) Now I'm thinking in another year I'll drop them off for an extended stay with Grandma where they go in diaper-wearers, and come home in underoos.
I drove out to Salt Lake with the boys by myself again, and 10 days later Amy flew out to meet us. She claims they started babbling way more in those 10 days she was away from them, and she's right. They are trying harder to form words and making sounds that if you aren't listening closely could be real conversation. Dog and possibly Grandpa seem to have been their first real words, though neither is as of yet articulated enough for the untrained, un-mama ear to recognize.
We also got to spend time with the boys cousins, which at times was utter chaos. It's the first time they have all been together since the wee rolley-polley stage when they didn't get very far, and no one cared if you stole their toys, because fingers and carpet lint were just as fascinating. Getting me and my sisters together, there was much pushing, crying, pulling, stealing, and stomping. And the kids were even worse! But we did have moments of quiet when kids were napping, or Grandpa was babysitting, when we did get together to talk and it was really nice being with both my sisters and mom at the same time. We also got all my cousins together for the first time in ages for a lunch that was equally chaotic, but very nice.
So as busy as I am as a mom, and as much as I have to handle with the two squirts I've already got, I'm finding myself thinking more and more about when we will be ready to have the next one. It took us about a year from the time we decided to start trying to have kids before I got pregnant with the boys, and then another 8 months after that before the boys were born, and I don't expect the next one to come any faster really. So if we started thinking seriously right now about having another one, the boys would be closer to 3 or older before a sibling makes an appearance. Seems old enough, right? Now if only the economy hadn't tanked, if I had health insurance, if Amy had insurance that covered pregnancy, if I had a job, if we had any leverage. It's moments like this when I really wish we had the ability to have one of those "oops, we're pregnant" incidences and we figured out how to handle it along the way. And it's moments like this when I'm really glad that we can't have any oops pregnancies, so we can get some ducks in a row.
In the mean time, I'm going to go spin aimlessly in circles over and over again with Ben and his giant grin, until he falls down laughing or runs into the furniture and starts crying. Gotta love that kid.
May I say that I am in awe of you for accomplishing the hurculean undertaking of driving by yourself with two babies from Reno to Utah? I can't imagine doing it once, let alone twice. You should be mother of the year, using utinsels or no. And just to add justification to my nomination, the fact that you would even allow the thought of more babies to enter your head shows that you must be waaay better at this than you think sometimes :)
You guys make cute enough babies that if you can swing it, you should definitely keep on going! That's my vote.
Posted by: Corrie | February 20, 2009 at 09:09 AM