Only One

When couples get married, it usually isn't long before they start getting pestered with the "when are you having kids?" question. And when they eventually have a kid, their respite is brief. It isn't long before they're peppered with the next question: "when are you having another one?"

Well, for us it's pretty much always been straightforward: never. And when Todd was 4 years old, we sealed the deal. So unless the highly-experienced urologist didn't do his job correctly, this is it for us.

Don't get me wrong-- we considered it when Todd was younger. And even now, I sometimes get pangs of wishing that Todd had a playmate near his own age, so that he doesn't always have to substitute stuffed animals for friends. Case in point, a recent morning when I awoke to find Todd in the midst of a riveting Monopoly game with a skunk, a dog and an octopus:

Poor kid!

But we realized early on that one was going to be enough for us. A two-working-parent-home is hard enough, and we have a LOT of help from my parents! What other parents get to foist off their kid on the grandparents for 3-4 months out of the year? I couldn't imagine how we'd handle more than one kid.

Not to mention that this kid is a handful. I've slowly come to realize that compared to a lot of other kids out there, he's relatively mellow, and I should be grateful. But he's still a whirlwind on his own. Everyone seems to think he's this nice, pleasant, obedient kid, but no, he's got everyone fooled :-P I firmly believe that the reason little kids seem to have boundless energy is because they suck it all up, through the air, from surrounding grownups, i.e. their parents. This explains why a kid will be jumping up and down at bedtime while Mom and Dad can barely lift themselves off the couch to get him TO bed.

And finally, kids are EXPENSIVE! I've done some figuring, and he costs us about $1500-$2000 a month. Can you imagine a second set of such expenses!? We'd be driven to the poorhouse in no time! :-P I mean, okay, yes, the large majority of that expense comes from his school and his extracurriculars, but honestly? He's really blossoming and thriving where he is, something he wouldn't do in a school with a larger class size. So... it's worth the money. But it also leaves us cautious about watching our resources, and a second child would only upset that balance.

Besides, I always maintain that while Allan only has one child, I am a single mother of two boys. Why would I want to deal with a third one? ;-)