Having Babies vs. Raising Children

I had an epiphany of sorts recently. I'm no longer "having babies" so much as I'm "raising children," if that makes sense to those of you out there on the other side of blog-land.

After putting together a family of four kids (one ready made and three cooked to order) and saying goodbye to one cat, we no longer seem like the "young" family that I still feel like. Although we are over thirty (me just barely, Monk *cough, cough* a bit more), and I find fewer and fewer reasons to be at the baby consignment shop unless I'm dropping off a load of "well-loved-by-the-twins" items, it doesn't set off a rampaging case of hormones like it did after the Princess was born. I guess this is what it feels like to know you're done 'having' kids and ready to move on to the next phase in your life. Rasising them to be happy, healthy, productive members of society.

Eeek.

One problem- although I envisioned that stage happening for my kids while I was pregnant many times, it was always like it was a movie on fast-forward.* The before-you-know-it-they're-one-the-its-kindergarten-then-it's-college-oh-my-they're-grown-and-out-of-the-house kind of movie. In real life there are oh-so-many decisions to make, which really translates to oh-so-many ways to screw up. I think so far we're doing an okay job. I mean, of course, we can look back and see a bunch of things that we coulda shoulda woulda done differently, but we not too anxious to build another human just to try out some new parenting techniques. I figure we'll hone the ones we've got and test 'em out on this crew, see what we get.

Funny to think that 20, 30, 40 years ago- our parents were saying the same things?



*Fast Forward. That was a great movie, wasn't it? At least a great bad movie. Right up there with Who's That Girl with Madonna. :) Okay, NOW I'm showing my age!