family life

When we got married overlooking a cliff on the ocean at Portland Headlight in Maine 12 years ago (more on that someday), we had already spent lots of time talking about how we wanted lots of children. I grew up one of four boys, she as one of 5 kids (3 girls, 2 boys). We knew we at least wanted 4 kids... maybe more. Um... not so much. We had our oldest, a girl, and life as we knew it changed, seemingly on a daily basis, particularly for me, as I'd never been around little girls much. (I was terrified - I really thought I'd have to take classes in pattycake, double-dutch jump-roping and how to do makeup on your dollies... I've escaped all of that so far.) She was everything to us, and, there being two of us and only one of her... it was wonderful. OK, trying to get her to sleep on her own was, predictably, torturous. In fact, I had to start on a weekend when Mom was doing her nurse duties all weekend on the night shift because about 93 seconds of crying baby was all she could take. Again, more on that another time...

When we decided to have a second child, the first attempt sadly ended in a miscarriage - it's amazing how nobody tells you the reality that many women suffer miscarriages, especially their second pregnancy. Why is that? We got right back to work (sigh... difficult as it was) and we were soon pregnant again, this time everything went fine. In the middle of all that, we bought our first house and moved. Our son was born and ... three months later we were pregnant AGAIN! Yes, you read that correctly. I'm not even sure how it all happened... there was a minivan, a drunken "first date out without baby" and... well, yes we were going to have 3 kids pretty quickly.

The week our lovely 3rd child was born, another beautiful girl, turned out to be one of the craziest times in our lives. Our dog, a greyhound named Jelly Donut, had become increasingly irritable with the 3-year-old and the newly-mobile baby, both of whom paid no attention to the archaic greyhound warning signs. The dog was increasingly having to be separated from the family (particularly after biting Mom, Dad's Mom and Dad's Dad's wife on the buttocks... seriously, all 3 of them... I thought it was funny, but then I was in the minority, and of course, my buttocks had never been bitten so... I kept quiet about it). To make matters worse, our son, whose birthday is Halloween (that can't possibly be good, can it?), developed an eye infection. The baby was due November 2, so we had a 9+ month pregnant woman going to frequent check-ups, a 1-year-old with an eye infection requiring more and more frequent visits to the doctor as it progressivly got worse, an irritable dog just waiting for any woman to get near her so she could bite more buttocks, a 3-year-old girl becoming ever more watchful of the curious and irritating baby who just wouldn't keep his hands off of her Barbies, and ... Dad. At this point, I was also trying to finish the Barbie Dream House in the evenings, which was to be her Christmas present (note, it was November 1... not even close to being done - I ended up finishing Christmas eve/morning and I think I slept through her almost hyperventilating when she opened it... good times.)

Of course, the beautiful girl arrived November 4 (more on this birth experience later... just a teaser - I was in the room "helping" with all 3 births and this was the only one I almost needed smelling salts for...) and within a week, the boy's eye infection progressed from "not a big deal, here's an oral antiobiotic" to "um... we're going to go ahead and admit him"... as in TO THE FRIGGING HOSPITAL!!! So, Dad and boy spent 3 miserable, depressing days thanking GOD that it was only an eye infection, finally going home to our newly very large family and ... the dog mortally wounds itself running around the yard. I'm not even trying to be dramatic here. We had to put the dog down, and Dad and almost-4-year old spent a rainy evening crying over the beloved dog's grave (God, did we agonize over how to handle that...) before designing and creating a memorial rock - lovingly painting and lettering it, finding just the right spot to install it in the newly turned earth... only to find all of work washed away the next day. OK, Bob Vila, I'm not, but ... in the end, I think we handled the whole thing pretty well, even if we had to hear "I miss Jelly Donut" every time she got upset for the next 3 years.

If you hadn't figured it out, yes, I was vasectomized about 3 and a half seconds after Mom got home from the hospital with Baby #3 (who, might I remind you, is precisely 1 year and 4 days younger than Baby #2). I tried for about a week to make my case about why this was unnecessary but... I was wrong, and I'm now totally and completely sterile. There will be no more of my children inheriting the Earth... praise the Lord.