So I figured it might be good to open a big old can of worms. (Oh, why not? It's a Wednesday in December and my toes are freezing...)
Babymamma and me are starting to making noise about number two. As my pal Bec, over at the Bottle, has already noted, this is what couples do nowadays. They make what was once a no-brainer into an overdetermined, months-long drama. Guilty as charged. But unlike Bec, I'm old. Really old. Like, so old that I remember when the Beatles broke up. And as a result, well, I'm old. So I don't want to wait too long to have another kid, because I'm afraid I'll be one of those creepy old dads who gets mistaken for the child's grandpa. (I'm creepy enough as it is.) I also want to be able to see as much of my kids' lives as possible. I want to see them graduate from college and start their own families and, perhaps most important, I want to live long enough to start holding their inheritance over their heads. That's really the dream.
Erin's a few years younger than me (okay, eight, but who's counting?) so she feels less urgency about this stuff. She's also feeling tired out by having one child and worried about what two will do to her ability to work on her writing and feel like something other than a baby life-support system. And then there's Josie, who, as you may have noticed, is something of an active child, a child who makes aggressive grunting noises the moment she senses that she's not getting the full attention of at least one parent. So there are her feelings to consider, as well. Both Erin and I grew up in the shadow of powerful older siblings who resented our presence and let us know it in less than subtle ways. So we're worried about that, too. And then Erin also worries that she'll miss Josie. And I worry that I'll never get another book written and hate myself for that. (Honestly, this whole summary of our doubts is making me wanna race out to one of those drive-thru vasectomy places -- Jiffy Snip they're called, right?)
But then there's the other side, which is, jeez, we love being parents and we want another little creature in the feature and we want Josie to have a sibling and we want to put another citizen on this earth. Heck, there's an outside chance we might even want three kids, which argues for sooner rather than later, as does the notion that Erin would like her time and body back eventually. We've taken to asking all our friends who have more than one and the folks we meet at the playground and in the grocery store and the airport. And the thing is, they all have different answers. Some say: Hey, space them out at least 2.5 years. And others say, whatever you do, don't wait more than 18 months.
So it's probably idiotic to ask you guys for advice, but you've done us right in the past, so I have to ask all the multiple kid Babbleonians (and the ones considering the prospect, like us): Whaddaya think? I suspect in the end we'll just go with our gut and hope we can make it happen and have fun trying. But in the meantime, there's so much delicious worrying to do, so help us out here, with any and all words of wisdom.
