The Itch is Back

It seems I am back to that old itch I thought I was rid of.

The baby bug.

Well, let's be fair.  "Rid of" isn't the right terminology.  Right after Justin and I got married, despite the fact that we had decided to wait to have children and start a family, the itch happened.  It seemed like babies were everywhere and that everyone was having them.  And to a point, that was true.  SO many of my Facebook friends, including people I had known since elementary school, were having children.  And the bug bit me hard.  I would lament to Justin about how my clock was ticking, and how I wanted them so badly.  However, soon enough, the itch passed and I was ready to wait.  The itch was put on hold.

This has been the way of life for right at 2 years.  Until recently.

Given all the events back-to-back over the past weeks (Mother's Day to Father's Day to birthdays to weddings), Justin and I have done a lot of traveling.  And, without fail, every time we travel, we talk about children.  This is mostly my doing, but Justin always has input as well.  We talk about what we will name them, how many of each we hope to have, what their nurseries and bedrooms will be decorated with, etc.  And with more traveling comes more talking about children.

This was bad enough until Justin and I were talking in the living room one night last week, and he said these words, "I'm ready to be a dad."  It was almost in passing in the middle of a conversation, but those words took my breath.  This was the man who had scoffed and nearly laughed every time I thought of yet another name I'd like to call our kids, or expressed my opinions on how to dress them.  This was the man who had not only supported, but almost ordered me to wait to have children.  And now, all of a sudden, he's ready to be a dad?!

It was wonderful and bizarre at the same time.  So many years of talking about going to Paris and the Grand Canyon before the kids came were tossed out the window.  Where my acceptance of age 30 as a starting point for having children had once been praised, it was now thought insane.  It was bizarre, I tell you.

Now, all of this is not to say that we started trying to conceive the night he said those words, but it is to say that the current plan is to start trying around this time next year.  We love the idea of having a child in 2014.  The number 14 has meant so many things to us over the years: Valentine's Day, our anniversary, our wedding day.  It would just seem full-circle to bring children into the 14-mix.  If we got pregnant next July, let's say after the 5th so that I would be 27, we would have our first child before I turned 28, which I think would make everyone happy.  Our parents would be delighted, of course, and it's before 30 but not so early to us.  As far as timing, I know we can't do a lot about that, but we really don't want a Christmas baby.  Or even a December baby, for that matter.  We've noticed that everyone seems to run their birthday and Christmas together, which is just plain unfair.  Justin and I also want to avoid having a child in July, simply because that month is already over-run with everyone else in our family.  And so, theoretically, our first child (or children, who knows?) would be born in April.  They would either be an Aries or a Taurus.

Anyway, I'm rambling now I think.  My main point was to document that Justin has given a small green light toward having a family, and I am pretty darn excited about our 2014 plan.  And now, I am itching all over again.  I have a feeling my future childrens' Pinterest board is going to get a little bigger over the next few days... :)