Excuses

Disclaimer: I'm not sure why I write so much about my thoughts about having children here. It is disproportionate to how much I really think about it. But you know how you have that friend who talk with about fashion and that other friend you consult on gardening? Well, besides talking with Husband (of course) and a few friends, this blog is where I go to with my thoughts about having children. Why, I don't know. But here it is.

In the last few years when I've imagined having children, I've had these ideas about what I thought I would want or need before trying to have kids.

At one point I swore I'd join a fancy gym and get in really good shape first. At another, I decided that I'd finally indulge and get really good bed linens (? I'm not sure quite what I was thinking here... because I'd be spending a lot of time in bed before and during being pregnant? I think I also had some idea that a child should be conceived amid proper linens, which probably tells you more about me than you wanted to know).

I realized lately with bemusement that these things that once sounded so important and far-away had now been achieved. Marathon running has put me in decent shape. Our bed is cloaked in pleasing and respectable linens. Despite these accomplishments, neither seems very important to me anymore as a precursor to children. Or maybe, it's that having these things doesn't make me feel any more ready.

But I do have one good excuse left... when we got married at 23 I said then that it was one thing to get married first, but quite another to be the first to have children. In the last year or two some family friends and distant friends have had kids, but still none of my good friends have taken the step.

As good as this excuse is, I'm not sure how many more years I can hang onto it, because among my good friends, very few are even married. But maybe I'll find that like the physical fitness and bed linens, this excuse doesn't matter either, in the end.