On babymaking

Right before we moved to Denver, I had really strong baby fever. I wanted a baby RIGHT NOW THIS SECOND. I knew it wasn't the right time, but oh, I wanted one.

And now? Well, I still want a baby, but not in the same insanely overwhelming way that I did. If I got pregnant now, it would be fine. But it wouldn't be the plan, and I'm happy with the plan the way it is.

I'm not quite sure what shifted. I think it's just because I'm so distracted. We moved, we're moving again, we're buying a house, we're adjusting to working from home, we're exploring our new city, we have a dog. There's just so much going on. And I'm loving it. It's very fulfilling and new and fun and exciting. So there's not as much space for me to be wanting a baby.

And plus, it's so fun with Torsten, and so nice to be able to just, you know, go to the dog park or walk the dog whenever, and go out for dinner whenever, and sleep late on weekends, and go hiking and... well, everything you do when you don't have many responsibilities. And I'm not quite ready to give that up yet.

Plus, we've only been married for just under five months. We're still newlyweds. And I want to enjoy that. A lot of stuff has happened for us very quickly, or at least it feels like it's been very quick when you read along, but for us it really hasn't been that quick. We'd been planning to move to Denver for about six months before it actually happened. We'd been wanting a dog for years, and knew that as soon as we lived somewhere that allowed pets, we would get one. We weren't planning to buy a house quite so soon, but it makes sense for our situation, so there you go.

But right now, that's enough for us. We want to take a chance to settle in to our new house and our new city, do some decorating, relax, maybe travel a bit more, just revel in each other and our dog a bit more. And then we'll figure out the whole baby thing. It won't be TOO long, but it won't be next month, either.

It's funny, though, because now that we're in a position where we're pretty much set, checklist-wise, to have a baby at any time, it's made me start thinking about what it will REALLY be like when we have a baby. Like, we talk about where we want to travel over the next couple of years, and then it occurs to us that oh, you know, all the different places we want to go while visiting Torsten's parents in Germany? Like Italy and Switzerland and Berlin and France? Well, we're not exactly going to cross all those off the list before there's a baby, at least not if everything goes according to the current plan.

But on the other hand, my parents traveled with my sister and me when we were very little, and while it's a daunting and often frustrating thing to do, it can be done. And given how far we live from both our families, our kids are just going to have to learn to travel from an early age. So yeah, maybe not so much with the leisure vacations a year or two from now, but we can still be us and do the things we want to do, at least to a limited extent, once we have kids.

So, you know. They say you never really know when you're ready, but I think that I will know, or at least have a general sense. And I think Torsten will too.

What about you? If you have kids, how did you know you were ready? If you don't have kids, do you want them? How will you know when the time is right?