once upon a time, things changed

...when i was younger, say about 12 or so, i had just started to dabble with the concept of babysitting to get some extra money. mostly i just babysat my little cousin. perhaps every now and then i would maybe babysit the neighbor's kids, or my parent's friend's kids. but mostly my little cousin... she was just a baby when i first began babysitting her. oh man - she would get in to everything! though i suppose that's what babies/kids do, right?

** oh. by the way. i know i said i would only blog during my down time at work. but i think i said there would, or might be some exceptions... i'm making tonight one of the exceptions**

so. babysitting. right. it didn't take long after babysitting my cousin before i swore off kids. i was probably about 13 - possibly 14 - when i had finished a solid summer of babysitting that little devil. what. a. nightmare. it wasn't long after that summer when i had made up my mind that i would never have kids, for fear that the little bugger would be a living nightmare - much like my cousin. i don't even know what she did to me specifically. maybe i was too young... maybe all babies/kids were like her. maybe i wasn't meant to be a babysitter... maybe she really was as bad as i remember her being. whatever the case, i didn't want any of my own. no way, jose. ever!

many years passed after that summer - i even babysat a few times after that summer - but i still held strong to the notion of not ever having kids. oh man. i was so adamant about it that my poor mom had slowly started to try and accept that her daughter might actually not ever have kids - poor mom. she started to lean heavily on my brother - poor brother. she would tell him that he was her only hope... begging him to please, one day, give her a grandchild or two... the good thing was that my brother did eventually want kids.

i'm 30 now and i have since changed my mind... you know... it's funny how things change over time. seriously. things change. people change. lives change. times change. everything has the opportunity to experience change. just look. it happened to me. i really didn't think i would ever, ever, ever, want kids. never, ever, ever! but eventually i met mr. right. we fell in love. and i just couldn't see myself not having kids with him.

what this realization of not not wanting to have kids with mr. right meant was, that one day when the time was right, i could see myself having kids with him. one day further down the line, not immediately. but i could see it happening one day... because of who he was and who i was with him. so technically, i guess that meant that i wanted kids, right?

this was a weird feeling for me; "wanting" kids. it actually kind of scared me. and every time i thought of myself with kids i got incredibly uptight. i worried that they would turn out like little individual nightmares on legs. you know. like the screaming, kicking little snot buckets you see out in public and in stores whose parents seem to not give two hoots to the wind about what their child is doing... yowsers! i'm sort of getting uptight now just thinking about that. whatever the case, i had decided that one day i would have kids with my mr. right. and in case you are wondering; mr. right is my husband. he can be seen below in the picture with me.


we have "kids in our future" all over our faces

........jfk........