There's been lots of baby-centric conversations recently. Our timeline still hasn't changed (we have a friend on a similar but less concrete timeline who when they visit asks if anything has changed. Every. Single. Time.. I think I need to get M to ask them to stop as it only serves to rub it in my face...), everything is still looking as it has been, although that deadline is slowly creeping closer. But we seem to talk about it more.
I'm not entirely sure if it helps or not.
We know three toddlers, all born within a few months of each other, who we interact with on a regular basis (plus the children of not-quite-so-close friends who we see occasionally), but the three toddlers are the focus here. Two boys and a girl, all close in age, with three very different parenting styles. And while our social commentary on those parenting styles is a conversations for another day, every time we spend some time with any of them (or in the case of my niece, we skype with her) we end up talking about said child, their behaviour, their milestones, and the associated parenting. We dissect what we like and what we'd like to replicate, and talk over the things we're not so keen on
Aside from the fact that it just reminds me that I'm being forced to wait, and I have several years until any child of ours is hitting those milestones, I do like that we're talking about it and making sure that we're on approximately the same page with things that we want to make sure that we do.
As you may have heard me mention on other social-media there is a law a hair's breadth from passing that will let us take our business to farmers markets. It'll go into effect in September with some luck. It led to a very long conversation (that started while wandering around the supermarket and carried on in the equivalent of B&Q!) about how we want the business to proceed and how we envision everything coming together. I had to be very vehement that I will sacrifice my business for starting a family, and to not even consider the opposite. I think he was a little surprised, by how strongly I felt about it if nothing else. But it was ultimately a good conversation and with some luck everything will come together in some semblance of how we would like it to.. we shall see!
Starting a family has also been mentioned a few times in conversations regarding us trying to improve our lifestyles. As previously mentioned we're going the old fashioned move more eat less route, with slow but steady progress and some mini goals and long term goals set. We want to create these habits now - having a balanced diet, eating sensibly, eating reasonable portions and not boredom or comfort eating, along with being more active - so that we can properly model them to our children, and hopefully have kids with less body image and food hang-ups than we both have.
I do like that we talk about these things, starting a family, how we want to parent and the like. It makes it more real, and that's a double edged sword. On the one hand the fact that it means it's getting closer and it is going to happen is wonderful. But it fills me with hope. Hope that gets broken and deadened with this wait, with the ups and downs of every day life, with staring at the calendar willing it to read a year and a half from now. How can I take joy in every day life, in passing events, when I'm just want them to fly by so our deadline is closer?
On a slightly random aside, I've been off the pill now for seven months. I'm very happy I chose to come off when I did as this much later my cycle is showing vague hints that it might just be starting to settle down and regulate, but that's as close as it gets. I've been a lot more emotionally stable (which doesn't really say a whole lot given my usual emotional state) and things just seem to go a little better.
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