The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Where to start... I have 3 things in mind that I want to write about, so this will probably end up being a monster post.

The Good

For the holiday, we went up north to my parent's place and spent Thursday night through Monday afternoon enjoying everything great about it! We saw fireworks and Abby was amazed. I forgot the camera, and it was dark anyway, so I don't know that I could have captured her face if I had tried. It was nice to just sit and enjoy it this time and not worry about the camera. I try to do that once in a while.

We also went to a little community fair and managed to get in some good fun before it started raining again. (For those of you outside of AZ, it's monsoon season, and the summer rains are incredible!) My mom got Abby a wristband so she could do whatever she wanted to at the fair. Everything (including cotton candy!) was included except for the petting zoo. That was only $5, and when she got in there, it was animal overload!!!

It took up about a parking spot's worth of space, and inside the fences they set up, they had 2 little goats, a little pig, a couple of geese and a duck, a boatload of fancy schmancy chickens, rabbits of assorted sizes, a puppy that was going NUTS, and up to about 10 kids at a time plus a grown up in there picking up anything resembling poo out of the hay they had put down on the ground. It was AWESOME!!!

She also had a lot of fun playing in the bounce house. She always likes that, so that was an easy first choice for the day. (*footnote below)

The Bad

The bad thing that I'm sure you know about is that I have gained more weight than I am comfortable just living with and I'd like to do something about it, but I have neither the time nor motivation to do so. I guess there's just always something else I'd rather be doing than going to the gym or planning, shopping, and preparing healthier meals for myself.

So, Marti decided he also wants to make a change and suggested that we try NutriSystem. For me it almost seems like a no brainer. I can eat a lot of things, in the sense that I'm not a food snob. Also, it looks like it will pretty much meet the need I have to just "grab and go" at meal time. We will probably look at the menu this weekend and get started. I hope it works for me. I think the worst part will be laying off the beer. :( I guess I can make THAT sacrifice.

The Ugly

So... My insurance at work is now in effect. I canceled the individual policy and I'm good to go if, say, I got pregnant or anything. But, there's this lingering hesitation in Marti, so we finally had "the talk."

What it boils down to is, he has now decided that he does not want to try for another child.

I have to admit, he has a lot of good points that he brought up.
1. We both turn 40 this fall and we're both getting tired.
2. He doesn't want to be an old dad and not have the energy to keep up with a little one.
3. Financially it will be tough to do what we want and plan for OUR lives (retirement, etc.) with another one in the picture.
4. One is hard enough to deal with, but how thin will our patience wear with 2 running around like little monsters on bad days?
5. I'd have to quit my job because the cost of daycare for 2 is about what I take home, so what's the use, right? (And I just don't think I'm cut out to be a stay at home mom. Besides, that would be fairly temporary, and then I'd be out looking for another job in a few years -- and what if I never found an awesome place to work like where I am now? The threat of a lifetime of crappy jobs scares me!)
6. The business Marti is in is a volatile one, and in all honesty, even though he's had a great run there of over a decade, one really never knows if it will continue, especially if the economy tanks. That leaves us with an uneasy feeling sometimes. There is always that threat.
7. I almost forgot the late nights, the pumping, and the baby food, bottles and diapers. We have light at the end of the diaper tunnel, and it's hard to imagine going back now.

He did tell me that if I insisted, he could probably be persuaded, but I know he doesn't want to.

The sad part is, I agree with most of what he brings up.

I have a few counterpoints, such as:

1. Daycare isn't permanent -- kids eventually go to school.
2. If it got THAT tight financially I could work earlier hours and he could cover the days with the kids and I could cover the nights.
3. Sure the first 2.5 years with Abby have sometimes been rough, but we're nearly pros now! We learned a lot along the way, so even though it will be hard, it will be easier in some ways than last time.

However, there is still no guarantee that I can even get pregnant in the next year or so (our self-imposed deadline last time we had this talk), let alone carry a baby to term again. So this could all just be misery for the sake of misery in the long run.

I just can't imagine NOT TRYING one last time. It makes me incredibly sad to imagine us in our older years looking back and knowing in hindsight that we COULD HAVE handled it. If things got a lot easier than we imagined or were not as hard as we feared... What then?

It would be easier to take if I know we at least tried.

It doesn't help that this all came to a head in the weeks leading up to last year's miscarriage. So much of that is on my mind right now. Do I really want to put myself through that again? I suppose I can take it.

What I don't know is that if life as we know it will survive this kind of stress. Not the stress of failing -- the stress of succeeding. I've heard stories of relationships that suffer when overloaded. What if Marti is right and it will just be too much for us? What if we are overly tired and cranky and start taking it out on each other all the time? He didn't mention the relationship angle, but I can't help but fear that. I feel like we've been through enough in the past couple of years with what that teaching job did to me. I remember how that felt. Why would I wish that on us again?

So, as we reached a standstill in the conversation, I just started crying and had to go upstairs to get a grip.

I think the reality of the situation is that we will be a single child family. I just don't know if I am comfortable just accepting that reality and I also wonder if just accepting it right now will lead to different problems later.

This is not how I imagined my life. I know we have Abby and she's been an incredible blessing to us. She's about as perfect as a child can be. (Other than the fact that, as a friend said today, she's extremely shy** and eats about once a week!) Why can't I just be happy with what I have been given? I guess I'm also lucky I never imagined a huge family with tons of kids. That would probably be harder to let go of. I just never imagined an only child.

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* Don't you just hate when you can't load a cell phone video to youtube? Or even better, when you try to convert it to the right file type with a free download, and the free download is just THAT -- you get to DOWNLOAD it for free, but using it is for a fee. WTF? I had a pretty good clip of Abby in the bounce house, but it is not here due to frustrations with 3G2 files from my phone. :(

** For the record, Abby is only extremely shy when she's around new people, in a new environment, or asked to perform a stupid toddler trick of some sort, such as singing a song for someone for the first time. But how can a mom resist asking her to do it when it's this cute? (FYI, my mom's name is Michele, so singing this song to my mom [out of the picture, but present in this video] is twice as cute!)


She looks up at my mom at the "I love you. I love you. I love you!" part.
At the end she kind of loses it, and I said, "Something like that." She repeated it. (In case you can't understand what we were saying there.)