Baby Talk...how do you know you are ready for babies?

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Oh my, the baby talk has begun in our household. (eeks!) Or rather, Andy has been bringing up the subject nonstop. In fact, he has been announcing to the world that he wants babies. I feel like the embarrassed apologetic parent trying to hush him up before anyone hears, or we make a scene. Yes, it is that bad. (Let it be known, Andy is my husband, not my child.)

When Andy and I got married over 3 years ago we both wanted kids. With all of the excitement and love that marriage brought, we decided that we wanted to have kids right away. (So glad that didn't happen!) We didn't use any birth control for the first 6 months of marriage. We weren't trying, but we weren't not trying, if you get what I mean. Nothing happened after 6 months, and by then we had gotten our senses back about us and decided that we needed to be on birth control asap. Since then, we have been blissfully child free and thoughtless of children. In fact, we even went through a year long phase of just not wanting children at all, ever.

It seems things have changed now...at least for Andy. I'm sure the fact that his younger brother and wife are about to have a baby is a huge contribution to the way Andy is acting. In 9 months Andy has gone from being completely against children, to wanting his own immediately. It is hard for me to grasp all of this in such a short amount of time. Usually I am the one to adapt to life changes more quickly, but in this case I am not. I am quite happy living life without being at the beck and call of a little rug-rat. (As cute as the child may be.)

It feels like the more Andy wants children, the less I want them. Does that even make sense? I have wanted to have babies most of my life until now. In fact, when I was about 22 years old, my ovaries ached for a baby so bad that some days I wanted to go hump the first man that I saw, all for the sake of procreating. (I'm telling you, I was a crazed hormonal woman!) Things have changed since then though. Could my hormones be depleting? Or maybe I have no more eggs left, therefore I don't feel the need to procreate? Or maybe I read too many baby blogs and only take away the bad things rather than the good things. Who knows, I certainly don't! Someone get me a shot of tequila, maybe that will help.

I do know that things are going really well with Andy and me. In fact, things are great! We have moved to a new place and are getting adjusted. I would hate to throw a baby into the mix right now. Our weekends are filled with non-baby adventures and our weeks are beginning to settle into a nice routine. We also don't have an established community here yet, and quite honestly we've been too busy adventuring that we haven't even tried to find one. Am I silly to think that we should have a community of people around us before having a child? Because that is the #1 thing on my list of things to be in place before having children. At the rate that Andy and I move and change jobs, we may never be in one place long enough to have a baby. This is all just my opinion though. There are two of us in this marriage, so I can't be the only one calling the shots.

How did you know it was the right time to have a baby? Did it feel right? I really just have no idea...

Adoption vs. having your own child...and we hear from Andy

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Adoption vs. having our own child has been the latest topic of conversation between Andy and myself these days. Growing up in another country as a missionary kid I have seen a lot of poverty along with sick hungry children. Most of the time, the community would take care of these children whether they were orphans or not, but in the back of my mind I knew this was not the case everywhere. Even as a child, I wanted to take these children in as my own. (Early maternal instincts I guess.) At some point in my childhood, I made a mental note that I'd like to adopt in the future.

Andy feels the opposite of me. (Go figure!) He brings the conversation down to the gene level. (A typical guy.) He was so kind to write in my blog and give his own view:


*I have a difficult time preparing for kids.  I enjoy the adventure of life and pursuit of my own selfish passions.  Children to me are a burden, who may bring great joy to the lives of people who have them, but at the same time hinder individual pursuit of greatness and self-discovery.  That is where I start the discussion of kids.  

I will start off by saying the American culture of adoption does bring benefit to the lives of individual children who may have been orphaned or inadequately coddled.  However, I get concerned by the unknown nature of adoption.  What about family history?  Why were the parents unable to care for the child?  Why were the parents unable to make good decisions when having this child?  These questions concern me when culturally, dating and marriage are used as tools of societal natural selection.  I have chosen a partner, based on her intelligence, beauty, and success to create a child which should carry the strengths of my partner and I into future generations.  If we choose adoption, then I feel I should have the opportunity in choosing my lineage with the same scrutiny as I have chosen my partner. 

So I did some research. I looked up statistics for adopted children, both from the US and from other countries. The statistics that I found showed that adopted children did just as well in school and social situations as biological children, no matter their background. In quite a few studies they actually did better. So take that Andy! He is still not convinced.

I think when it comes down to it, Andy wants his/our children to have his genes and know that the child actually came from us. To him, that may feel more real. I, on the other hand, am perfectly fine adopting a baby or young child and calling it my own. I don't feel the need to carry the child in my womb for 9 months (giving it my genes) and birth it out to be able to say it is my child. If I can do some good in this world by adopting and giving a clean, healthy, loving home to a child without my genes, then that's what I want to do. (And yes, I know there comes the added work of an adopted child.)

So the discussion will continue... Andy and I aren't ready for children just yet, but the conversations have started. We may talk circles around this forever and never have children because we can't agree, who knows.

What about you? What are your views on adoption vs. having your own child? Or genes? How did you decide?

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never enough beauty.....beauty is everything, beauty of the soul

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sabine weiss

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this has been such a nice week. sometimes summer can unfortunately be very uneventful......at least compared to the expectations i give myself......i want to go everywhere, do everything, just fill every summer day with tons of exciting and wonderful events and experiences. but i am not very good at planning, so it seems like when something wonderful and enchanting does happen, it just appears and falls into my day.....but with much fallderall and waving of happy arms on my part. i love being with people, going places, doing things. i don't like being lonely, away from excitement. so i really love it when we have fun. this week we had lots going on.....lunch out with friends in a pretty little cafe, visit other friends in their amazing, huge home up on a mountain, visits with other friends.....it just makes me realize how people are so important in life. we would all be so terribly, terribly lonely without each other!! so i hope you are having a really wonderful summer and spending time with dear friends and family, too!!



would love to hear from you!

debbie

                                                         http://www.anabundanceof.blogspot.com/

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                                                               children

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from emma cassi's blog

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better now......feeling better now. it is disheartening to me to be affected by things in life that are negative. i want so much to just be surrounded by beauty......to be able to see beautiful flowers everywhere around me, beautiful art, people who are happy and kind to one another.....just all those things that make life worth living to be honest. when i see situations or people that are unhappy, angry or whatever, it is so difficult to deal with that. i try to cheer others up when i am around them, by being kind and thoughtful, but sometimes that is very difficult to do. that is when i find myself just running back so quickly to those things that are comforting to me and bring my heart and my spirit back to a beautiful, calming place. it is like a lovely, quiet garden that heals my soul. these pictures touch my heart. they represent who i am as a person, an artist, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a friend. i can't live without beautiful things, beautiful people and places and beautiful music, art, etc. it is as important to me as the air i breathe. i am so grateful to all of these creative people who share their incredible talents and vision!!



debbie

Aritsts on Etsy and other talented people!

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beautiful arab boy

sea angels

again, i must apologize for sharing so few posts lately......have just been so busy and have also been spending more time on etsy.....searching and finding so many great artists! hope you'll visit my shop to see all the wonderful favorites i've found lately. etsy is amazing.....always stunning artists to see there. hope you are having a great week. remember to do something kind for someone today! there are so many people in the world whose day would be brightened with even a little smile!

More lovely pictures from my blog from a long time ago.....

these are some of the other beautiful photos that I posted on my blog a long time ago.....haven't seen them in so long. my computer crashed last year and i lost so many wonderful pictures but thank goodness.....they were kept on my blog. so i hope you don't mind me sharing them again.....if you haven't searched through my entire blog, you may not have seen them before, so hope you enjoy them. i'm not sure which blogs or sites i found them on and since my computer crashed and i lost the links to these photos, i may not be able to find the sources, but let me know if you're interested in the links and i'll try to find them. hope you are having a wonderful day. we're going for a walk.....it's so nice outside here today!!

children make people happy

from the book by Mary Randolf Carter....."An Unkept House....."

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hi everyone......it's such a beautiful day here. we've had such odd, warm weather. they say that it's the dryest month ever in utah. we just got back from washington (state). it was so beautiful and GREEN!!!! i miss it already. we love utah but terribly miss washington and oregon. we went to see my mom who lives on the coast in an old house (100 years old). it's very rustic, like an old lodge. she has always collected antiques ever since i can remember and her house is filled with so many beautiful things. we had a wonderful time.



i posted these pictures because i love children and i thought the new year should have pictures of children to start this new time off with a smile, a grin, a giggle and a silly laugh. hope you have a fun year and a fun day!



would love to hear from you!

debbie