For the past two weeks, I've though I might be pregnant. This morning, I found out I'm definitely not.
I wasn't trying to get pregnant. There was some carelessness on vacation. Mistakes were made. But as the days without the familiar achiness slid by, I started to wonder. I did a little mental calculation. I realized if I were pregnant, the baby would be due in December. Of 2007. This year.
And though there was a little bit of disappointment this morning when I saw it was not to be, I realized I am not ready, not this moment, to do it again.
I have written extensively in the past about whether or not to have another child. We were staunchly against it when the little angel was eight months old and we were still mourning our old lives. We were against it at 18 months when she began the Six Months of No Sleeping Hell. We questioned our thinking when she went from a nonsleeping mess machine to a freakishly verbal, making-up-poop-jokes-and-helping-set-the-table two-year-old. As we round the corner bumping up against three, we're on board with giving the little angel a sibling on whom she can blame all of her problems later in life. It will give her someone else to blame besides us, and we're giving like that.
Somehow finding out I'm not pregnant made me think hard about where we are in our grand plan. We know we want to move to a house with a safer yard, a better school district. We've been talking about moving for years, and we even put our house on the market for a very unfortunate period of time in 2004. I started thinking about being pregnant and moving and taking the little angel out of The Emerald City all at once, and how horribly unfair that would be to her. I realized we have to start tackling these changes one at a time, so it doesn't all happen at once to her. I know kids are resilient, but as her parents, we should try to make her transitions as easy as we can.
Driving to work this morning, I noticed all the construction going on in downtown Kansas City. When I moved here in 1998, you could shoot a bazooka down Main Street at 5:15 p.m. and not hit a living soul. Now you can't move for all the cranes and shiny newness. For a long time, Kansas City was afraid to improve. Change = scary. I love the change downtown. I love how vibrant it makes the city feel. As much as my beloved and I can be cautious financially, I think it's time to start looking at making some of the changes we've known for years it's time to make.
As the Editor Across the Aisle said this afternoon, "You are a woman of action!" I called a contractor to get a bid on fixing the plaster, replacing the front door, doing the things we need to do to sell the house. Let's get this show on the road. Someday there will be a baby, and I don't want to have to store it in the office closet.
