It's Been A Year

Today marks a few things. It's been a year since we took our first family vacation. Visiting the ocean together was magical. Lorelei really lived up to her siren name, loving the water. On that trip we fell deeply in love with Oregon, and decided our ultimate goal (location wise) is somewhere in or near Portland. On that same trip, on the 3rd of August, Lorelei turned 6 months and cut her very first tooth. You can see in the pictures above that she was a real trooper about it. Even during the 9 hour car ride home! If you've done the math, this also means that today my little Lorelei is 18 months. That's 1.5 years! She's definitely not a baby anymore and that is so, so hard for me to grasp sometimes. I do the mom thing, where I look back at pictures of a tinier her and cry my eyes out. Especially seeing her run around, speaking sentences, helping us do things,  and becoming highly independent, all with 10 teeth and a crazy mop of hair on her head.

There's another thing that missing the tiny baby is doing to me, and that's giving me baby fever, BAD! Part of me misses being so needed and so adored. Those are selfish reasons for wanting another. Here's the right reasons: 1.) I think it would be awful and cruel not to have a sibling. I feel like having someone to play with when your toys get boring and your own imagination isn't enough is the best. There's also something to be said about how you learn to care about other people and accept people when you have a sibling that you love unconditionally. I would not be the person I am without my siblings, and I think they would say the same. 2.) David missed Lorelei's birth being in the army (and most of my pregnancy too). 3.) I feel after miscarrying her twin that I was meant to have two babies. I believe in spirit babies, when a mother loses a baby, that same baby returns to heaven and waits for the right time to be born to her. 4.) I think that being a stay at home wife and mom means (for me anyways) that having another baby would make my life feel more full. With just one, be she crazy and demanding, is sometimes still too quiet and lonely. 5.) Since we plan on homeschooling, I think it would be better, as in not as isolated, with more than one child. 6.) I still feel robbed of my womanhood and stripped of my abilities to naturally give birth as God intended after having to have a c-section. 7.) I think my husband and I made one darn cute, super smart little lady, and I would hate to let our good breeding stop at one. So that's my short-list (not very short) of reasons to have another. I have myself completely convinced it would be a good thing. And soon, I wouldn't want more than 3 years between them.

My hubby on the other hand is opposed. I don't want to paint a picture here of him being a bad guy, because he absolutely is not. And I've avoided posting about this topic here for a long time because it's sensitive. We've only recently been talking about it. I was so afraid to voice that I wanted another, for months because I know how he feels about it. He's always a voice of reason. He worries. And he does it all in passion and deep thought. David has good reason's for not wanting another. 1.) Money, naturally. It's already short with one, but we could pinch pennies harder. 2.) I know he worries about being spread to thin in terms of giving enough love and attention to all. It's hard to think you could have any more love to give than what you give your first, and/or only child. But I always hear that your love as a parent really just grows, and is different towards each one. 3.) He's afraid that the pregnancy/birth will be rough as it was before, this point is mostly assumed (what with a twin miscarriage at 7 weeks, way to much weight gain due to depression, and the c-section). 4.) This is also assumed, I'm sure he is afraid that our stress levels would be too high, with less sleep, more chaos, more work in every sense. This is all from my point of view of course. His argument would sound better coming from him. It's hard to get him to really divulge though.

Sometimes I worry that it will become a bigger issue with us because we both know what we want and what we think is right and neither of us is changing our mind any time soon. Anyways, there is my stress and sad dilemma on the internet for people to think what they will of. Getting some of it out will hopefully give me the space to sort it out in more detail in my own head.

To end on a lighter note: Today my lately rediscovered, many-years-estranged cousin (more on that another time) came over to hang out with Lorelei and I, and brought over a Kitchen Aid stand mixer that her family unit had no use for. My kitchen now feels adult and fully functional! And I am so, so grateful for it.