And some people's children ain't that great a contribution.

If only they could all be Zron's, because your kid totally RAWKS! I've just decided to try to train for a short triathlon - distances not much greater than your kid's, frankly - and I hope I have half as much determination as your little guy. Kudos.

I am the person who cries every time she watches Cool Runnings (yes, that movie about the Jamaican bobsled team), and Zron and JudyZ have themselves such a great kid (well, as I understand it they have great kids, but were talking specifically from the story here) that that story caused me to tear up in my little office.

Maybe it's because I'm hormonal. Maybe it's because I have too active an imagination and have watched too many movies and could see the slo-mo shots of a determined kid hoisting his bike on the shoulder as cars started coming down the course and crossing the finish line for the bike section, inspiring all onlookers as he soldiered on to a powerfully swelling score by John Williams. Maybe it's because I wish more kids were like Zron's, and hope that mine will be. Because that's just so great.

Mama Tiger, thank you for your post all those pages ago. Working in a field with highly career-driven women, I get a lot of the "choosing stay-at-home-momhood means wussing out and being a weaker woman", so your words were a breath of fresh air.

My mom, who actually scares my husband a little with how much of a feminist she is, is actually my second-biggest supporter (MrKate is #1). She sends clippings from papers and magazines, and brochures and fact sheets in support of going back to work and in support of staying home. She even sent some on stay-at-home dads.

I'm not sure when my mother got to be so smart, helpful and open-minded, because I could have sworn 5-10 years ago when I was a teenager that my parents didn't know anything, wanted me to be just like them at all costs, and were out to get me. It's weird how parents can grow so quickly! ;-)

My mom was a stay at home, and I was always 50-50 on whether to stay or work. Then one day a couple of years ago my boss starting yelling at me because he didn't do something he should have done and he wanted to know exactly why it was I didn't make him do it. At that point I decided if I ever had kids I was staying at home. Beacuse dealing with a five year old? Painful. Dealing with a forty-year old who acts five? NOT WORTH IT!!!

Zron, you can add me to the list of folks who think that Isaac is an awesome kid, and that you and JudyZ are to be commended.

I'm still obsessed with the damned Kool-Aid dude. Maybe I'm thinking of something the kids used to yell whenever he burst through the wall. Anyway, I also tried googling it and I just wanted to share this paragraph with you, not because it contains any info...just because it made me laugh.


Heh.

I've always been highly amused by Kool-Aid Man, which strikes me as odd, as I'm not even a fan of the drink. I think it's just the absurdity of the advertisements.

Rachel, that paragraph sounds familiar to me. Who wrote that?

ETA: piperdown, that's one of my favorite Family Guy moments. I still can't help but laugh when thinking about it.

Which reminds me of one of my favourite Family Guy episodes

All this talk of Kool-Aid reminds me of my future inheritance. I'm the youngest in a large family. My Dad, organized guy that he is, sent out inventory lists to all of the kids while updating his will a few years ago. Each of the kids had to rank the items on a scale of 1 (I will fight tooth and nail for this) to 5 (eh, give it away, I don't care).

We all turned in our preferences for him to rank and decide who gets what. Most of us don't care about the condo, the cars, the TV. We're fighting over the sentimental items, like the spatula Mom used to spread frosting on all of our birthday cakes. And the item I get? Is the Kool-Aid spoon. It's not really remarkable, but it's this long, crooked spoon used to stir up thousands of 2-quart batches of Kool-Aid for my thirsty siblings and me. Good times.

ETA: When did I get to be a Video Archivist? Kewl.

It's funny the things that mean the most to you. When my parents house was broken into they stole jewellry, the VCR and lots of other stuff. But, the item that bothered my mother the most was a ceramic lamb that was knocked of the wall and smashed. It used to hang in the nursery for each of us.

ETA: I'm a Couch Potato - it's my true calling! I couldn't have done without all of you.

Rachel, all I remember is that the kids would always yell, "Hey Kool-aid!" and then he'd come busting throughthe wall with an "Oh, yeah!"

Sentimental stuff? that's what sis and I had the most problem with when we cleaned out Mom's house. The anodized aluminum iced tea glasses, the old mixer, the butcher knife --the little things.

First, zron, your story made me cry. actually cry. Then again, I cry at those old AT&T commercials, so maybe I'm just a sap.

second,

Amen. Now that I've turned 30 (and am still happily single), I've been getting the same crap from some people. No really - I don't want children. Sure, sometimes I see a baby and get all mushy, for, like 10 minutes, but that doesn't mean that I want to keep it.

This also reminds me of a horrible person that I used to work with when I was in college. She couldn't have children (that's not what made her a horrible person - she was just generally a bitch), and she would constantly get in another co-worker's business because said co-worker theoretically could have children, but she and her husband didn't want to (why this was any of bitch's business to begin with, I'll never know - it was a small office). I mean, what did the bitch want? for co-worker to pop out a kid and hand it over? it's not like co-worker would have let her within 10 feet of any kid.

(and don't even get me started on what she was like when she found out I was volunteering as an escort for the pro-choice network - I was apparently a very evil person).

With all this talk about Kool-Aid, I decided to find out what flavor of Kool-Aid I would be. Check this out. I'm Pink Lemonade.

Gah! Now you've got me thinking about those commercials and I actually remember what they yell when he bursts through the wall.

They yell "Hey Kool-Aid!"

Hope that's tremendously helpful.

Rabrab beat me to it!

Edited again to add:
It's always the little things that mean the most. My siblings and I "fought" over The Knife. We didn't care about the house or car or furniture. We wanted The Knife that our mother used every day to peel and slice tomatoes. It was an old army knife that has been sharpened to a thin sliver....and no one dares use it any more (my sister won that battle). The other thing that was important to me was a cheap ceramic rose bud vase that our mother used for cuttings from her favorite rose bush. It sits proudly on one of my bookcases (right beside her picture), and I put a rosebud in it every year for her birthday.

jpgr, that is awesome. I'm sure that you will in turn tell your kids (or neighbor's kids, or your cat, depending on what your ideal family consists of!) about how many gallons of Kool-Aid you drank growing up made with that spoon.

When my grandmother died she left few material possessions and more than 35 children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. The house we all agreed should go to my cousin and his wife that lived with her her last few years. I was blessed to be the one that got the cookie jar.

I'll echo you - it's not really remarkable. But it's this plain white cookie jar with a wooden lid that kind of tilts toward you that she always had full of molasses cookies. Whenever we came to Grandma's we would stick our hand in the jar on the way in for one of those warm cookies that you cannot get anywhere else.

I was not the only grandchild to want that cookie jar, and I'm one of the youngest by far, but my aunts and uncle (grandma's kids, that settled the estate) figured that since I was the only one that learned to make molasses cookies, the jar should go to me. When my family comes to visit now, I try to have a batch of those cookies warm from the oven. It just tastes like going back to Grandma's house, and for a minute she's still here.

My but I'm loquacious today! I'm blaming it all on hormones.

Heh. I'm Ice-blue Kool-Aid.

kate, that's a great way of deciding who should get the cookie jar.

From the Oracle of Kool-Aid:
Pretty accurate, actually.

I hope that I'm Grape or Red.

Did you all grow up calling it "red" or by the name of the actual flavor?
I'm wondering if this is cultural or regional.

These stories are making me all warm and fuzzy. I'm so, so sensitive today.

And, darn it all! I'm Ice Blue. Oh well. At least I'm "very popular with the young crowd".

The flavour is "red". It's sure not "cherry". (I think it's "purple", not "grape", too.)

I don't mean that as a perjorative, btw.

I'm Tropical Punch. Apparently I'm wild and crazy - I am so not wild and crazy (but I may make an exception for TARcon).

Is Black Cherry new - I don't remember that one from my distant childhood?

I'm Ice Blue, too, Suga Wuga!

And now I wanna go home and bake some molasses cookies. They're Mr. jpgr's favorites!

I'm Ice Blue, too.

And with Kool-Aid I think the only flavors they had when I was growing up (at least in my house) were Red, Grape, Lemonade, and Pink Lemonade. Then that crazy Blue.

When you were asked what flavor ice pop you wanted, the answers were Orange, Cherry, or Purple.

Because we all know that purple stuff doesn't taste like grapes. It just stains like them.

Thank you! I'm 40 and decided when I was 15 that I didn't ever want kids. It was an odd decision to make as a child, but it was also one I've never budged from nor regretted. I have seven nieces and nephews, all of whom I love dearly. I'd absolutely kill anyone who ever harmed a hair on any of their heads. But that doesn't mean I want any of my own. Nor should I have any of my own if I know in my heart that I'd be less than a stellar mother, because a kid deserves better than that. A fabulous aunt does not equal a great mother. I mean, I think kids are just fine - I just don't want any of my own.

I'm glad to be out of my twenties, when all I heard was the condescending, "(*Grin!*) You'll change your mind!" Well, thanks for clearing that up for me; I didn't know my brain stopped functioning on the subject of babies. Or the ever-popular, "One day you'll meet a man and you'll WANT to have kids with him." Wrong-o. I've been in love a couple of times, and the one nagging thing that ran through my mind was, "How am I going to break the news to him that I don't want children if the topic ever comes up?" I've had marriage proposed to me twice. However both men were looking to drag me out to the house with the white picket fence and start cranking out babies. And I just couldn't do it. I have no regrets, but that's just not me - I admire folks who can do it, but it's just not me. I consider myself fairly smart for not just settling down, starting a family, and thinking to myself, "Oh - I'm sure it'll all turn out all right." And I've lost count of the frosty looks and the horrified gasps when I say that I never want to be a mother. I wasn't aware it made me a monster, just because I don't want what the general population wants.

I consider kids to be the most important decision a person can enter into. You're bringing another life into this world. And yet it amazes me how many people I see putting more thought into buying a car than into having a kid. The thing that infuriates me the most? The phrase, "Oh, but it's different when you have your own. You have a baby - you'll see." Excuse me, but what? What if it's not different? See, that's the thing for me - I know it wouldn't be different. I know I'd have no patience, I'd be miserable, and who would suffer for it? The kid. And I've had people say that kind of stuff to me dozens of times, which really makes me think - okay, you're sitting there, listening to someone telll you they don't want kids, who'd be a self-admitted shitty mother, and you're encouraging them to have children? Shouldn't kids be treated more importantly than little human litmus tests to see if someone who doesn't want kids might possibly be a good parent or not? And what if I had a kid and I wasn't a good parent - what then? Ooops, guess that little experiment didn't work out too well, did it? Now there's not only a miserable adult who knew they shouldn't have entered into this - but more importantly, there's a small child, a child who never asked to be born, stuck for his or her whole life with a mother who never wanted him/her to begin with. Nice life for the kid - them and their breezy, "Oh, it'll be fine once you have the baby. It's different when it's your own." Like this innocent child is just some sweater you can return to the store.

Judging by what I've read, it sounds like the parents on this board are truly cool ones, who love being parents. And that's the way it should be. That's the way it should always be. And it should never, EVER be forced upon someone who knows they wouldn't be good at it. Believe me, there are more people in this population who want kids than who don't want kids - I am in a very small minority. The population of the world will hardly crumble because I don't care to procreate. I find it horribly insulting not just to me, but for any child out there, that people can be insensitive enough to just think anyone off the street should be a parent just because they're a woman and "ought" to want that in their lives.

When we cleaned out our house, I got the ice cream scoop. When my father's generation cleaned out his parents house, they fought over the mashed potato bowl.

Last year we did Christmas stockings, and my mother randomly gave away things from her kitchen. The cheese slicer ended up going to my husband's brother, but I traded, so I could keep it. Not that I need another cheese slicer, but it was the cheese slicer I learned to slice cheese with.

For Harry Potter fans

I will admit that it's different when it's your own kid. You laugh at seemingly stupid things, the poop and the puke aren't as bad. But I wouldn't force someone to have kids just to prove that point.

Last night we were at the Outback with the in-laws and our 13 month old son. At a nearby table was a couple with a baby about his age. The kid was screaming - not crying screaming, but doing that happy shriek for no reason. The parents were cracking up, and to me, the observer, they looked pretty stupid. The kid was yelling, why is that funny? And then I said to the Mr, we do that, don't we. And he said, yup. And I shuddered. And then laughed when my kid started banging on the table. I did stop him from throwing his food on the floor though.

I'm joining Hawkwild in the dark and introverted club. Sounds good to me!

Faygo even admits that the flavor is red, not cherry. Out grocery store carries Faygo pop: Orange Pop, Lemon-lime Pop and Redpop. That's what the label says --Redpop. Gotta love truth in labelling. And on a related note, I stopped at Burger King about a week ago and got one of their slushies. I ordered Cherry, and the thing the guy hands me is bright lime green. Why is cherry now green? I've finally accepted that raspberry is electric blue but green cherry? Why???

Hey, there's kids on my lawn! Got to go chase them away...

Heh. I wonder if you ordered lime, if it would be bright red.

I never understood the logic behind those arguments. I think most women who don't want children know early on that motherhood is not in their plans, and only become more firm in their stance as they get older. I knew that I was not going to wake up one day and suddenly have a total 180 about this, especially since I knew since high school that kids weren't for me.

I had serious problems with my plumbing a few years ago and long story short I ended up having a hysterectomy. This is the conversation I had with my boss (a woman) when I told her I had to have the operation:


BOSS: Are you sure you're okay about this? You're not sad that you won't be able to have kids?

ME: I decided years ago that I didn't want children, so it's a non-issue.

BOSS: That's okay, you can always adopt.

ME: You misunderstood me. I don't want children, biological or otherwise.

BOSS: But you'll change your mind when you fall in love and get married. Marriage changes everything.


At that point I just gave up arguing because I felt like I was talking to a brick wall, she just did not get it. I have the utmost respect for parents because bringing a child into the world and raising them, basically for life, is an awesome responsbility. I see my sister with my nephew and I honestly don't know how she does it. I am more than content to be a doting aunt and godmother.

What's worse than having that conversation with others, RitaTome, is being 36 and having it with yourself. I don't have a strong desire to have children, but I don't have a strong desire not to have them. I just don't know, but I'm afraid that someday I'll regret not having them.

On the other hand:



That's what scares me. I'm not sure I'm capable of raising a child, knowing that I can't send it back to its parents because I'm its parent. I can barely take care of myself sometimes. How could I possibly take care of a kid?

And I'm not sure I'll ever be ready to give up the freedom of being able to go out with friends whenever or just go to the store when I want to without having to think about babysitters or packing half the world. Then again ...

Also, I'm another one who supposedly is Tropical Punch, wild and crazy and fun loving. People love your style, except for the loners and quiet shy people. I always thought I was one of the loners and quiet, shy people. I guess maybe I'd like to be wild and crazy. But I'm not. I'm really, really not.

I cannot understand people who insist everyone needs to have a houseful of kids to be complete and happy. I have one child, and have no intentions of having another one. I'm single, and people always tell me that as soon as I meet someone I'll want to have more. No, really, I don't. I like things the way they are now. I have no desire to go through any of those stages again. I have the utmost respect for anyone who has thought this out and made a decision about it. You know yourself best, and the best part of living in these times is that we have choices on these issues. So many people seem to fall into parenting because they're too lazy/thoughtless/whatever to think about the results, and the kids are the ones who suffer for it.

I realize it's not the same thing at all, but there's also a great deal of pressure put on couples to have more than one child.

Mr. TroopDoop and I have one daughter, and that's all we want. Yes, I feel some guilt over not giving her any siblings, but if we were to have another child, it would be solely to provide a sibling for our existing child and not because we want another kid. We're not convinced that "providing a sibling" is sufficient reason to bring another child into the world.

And yet....you wouldn't believe how many people go on and on and on about how lonely our daughter will be, and that if we were to have another child our hearts would open up and we'd love it just as much, and how our family isn't complete, and -- this part bugs me the most -- how our kid is going to grow up selfish and not know how to share because she's an only child.

(NOTE: Numerous studies have debunked the myth that only children are selfish, etc., but it's a very convenient stereotype.)

Gargh! It's nobody else's business if we want another child or not. Grrrr!

Edited to add that legis said it quite well and beat me to it. :-)

I agree with all of these statements. I really hate people who say that you will change your mind and want them. Thanks for the insult in saying I am a stupid fool who doesn’t know my own mind and personal preferences. I was 11 when I told my mother that I was going to have a hysterectomy as soon as I turned 18 because I hated children so much. I was never someone who would ever voluntarily baby-sit for even an hour.

I don’t actually hate children, but I don’t want them around me in either large numbers or for more than a few hours. They bring nothing to my table of interests.

If people, men or women, truly want children then they should have them. No one should ever have children because it is the expected thing to do, and having children just so you’ll have your own personal servant and someone to take care of you when you get old is the most selfish thing imaginable.

Interestingly enough one of the couples in my close group of friends is separating over this topic. When they got married ~10 years ago, both were absolutely certain that neither wanted to have children. The husband has changed his mind. The wife has not. They live in separate households now but are still throwing a joint New Year’s Eve party and remain very good friends, she just has no interest in having children in her household.



Frankly no. I have never seen myself getting married. I don't even see myself sharing living quarters with anyone. The remote possiblity of settling down with someone would only ever occur in my late 40's early 50's and that is highly doubtful. I just have zero interest in sharing my personal space with anyone on a continual basis. (I have thought that if I ever do end up 'settling down' with someone, he better be in the military or have some other job which takes him away the majority of the time, because I will come to hate him quickly if he was around all the time.)

All that being said, with absolute sincerity I can say that Zron and JudyZ, you both have a wonderful child in Isaac. He's the kind of kid I hope my friends' children turn out to be. (I do not say this based solely on this most recent post about him either.)

I'm ice-blue too. What is that? And what kind of flavor is BLUE? Red, yes, but blue?

This is several pages back now, but the best guess on when we'll go to China is still Decembe or January. We're still waiting for our official approvals, but we are almost done with all the paperwork and the homestudy is finished, so yay!

Word to those who don't want kids and know it. I don't know why the world thinks everyone ought to want kids (well, every woman; I'm sure guys in their 30s don't get "but don't you want kids" from random co-workers and acquaintences, although they might get it from their mothers). It's so much better to not have them, duh, if you don't want them. I've come to think that everyone ought to have a homestudy done to be allowed to have children. There would be far fewer unhappy kids and unhappy parents in the world.

I get that argument about how I will feel differently after I have a kid all the time. Of course I will, that's a species survival mechanism, not a reason to have kids.

I'm 42, never married and always have wanted children. Do people ever stop to think when they say things like "that biological clock is ticking, isn't it...? Yes, thank you, I'm well aware of that and it depresses the hell out of me without everyone reminding me of it.

An acquaintance of mine is 38, and unmarried (in remission from leukemia) and has decided to go the in-vitro route. Personally, I don't see it myself. It's damned hard work, raising a child, and, personally I don't know why anyone would choose, from the get go, to do it alone. I admire anyone who does raise a child alone, but I know it's not for me.

I'm financially secure, think I'm reasonably mature and responsible (with the exception of my internet addiction) but I think it would be selfish of me to bring a child into the world just because I'm getting too old to have one. That's not enough of a reason for me to have a baby.

The other reason for not having a baby is that if anything happened to me, my brother and his completely useless wife would be raising that child. I don't even leave my dog wtih my sister in law if I can avoid it. I certainly would never leave a child with her.

You know, I've seen the "want to have children" thing in reverse, too.

My wife is German, and in Germany, there is a very strong societal pressure not to have children. If you want children, you're supposed to have only one, raise him or her until about 7-10, and only then is it acceptable to have another, if you can afford it. Having children you can't afford to support is irresponsible, and only "stupid, lower-class" people have multiple children. Three children? You're vulgar. More than three? You're an animal and a burden.

When my wife and I went shopping for a new home, we got tours of model houses with up to six bedrooms. She had trouble understanding that there could be bedrooms for so many children, and that people who would have so many children might possibly be rich enough to buy the house. After all, rich people don't have multiple children.

I don't like societal pressure to have chidren (we've been married for 6 years, and no kids yet) but I also don't like societal pressure not to have children. Either way, it's skeevy.

Wow, I'm glad that my "no kids" rant didn't scare you guys off! Needless to say, I hardly ever find people who think the same way I do about the subject. I'm 40, and after hearing me talk like this since I was 15, my mother only just accepted my decision two years ago!

By the way... my Kool Aid test:



Hee! I'm an annoying Lime Kool Aid! I think it was the green VW Beetle that cinched it for me...

As I think everyone here is making clear, all choices -- no children, one or many; SAH or working moms -- make sense for different women (sad to say, much of this doesn't even come up for men). What makes utterly no sense to me at ALL is why anyone would ever comment on or question someone else's choice. Could it get any more intrusive or personal?

A friend of mine (married more than 10 years, no children) finally came up with this response to the unending "when are you finally having kids?" intrusion: "I guess that will be after we consummate our marriage".

Yeah....me too! It's nice to know there are other women out there that feel the same way.

Kool-Aid flavor? Tropical Punch. Totally wrong on so many levels.

Where is this Kool-Aid test. Did I just miss something and everyone is listing their favorite? I swear I've searched the thread back 10 pages and I cannot for the life of me find a Kool-Aid test.

Me, I'm Black Cherry. Since I don't recall ever having drunk Kool-Aid at all as a kid, this means not a whole heck of a lot.

I've got two small kids. I did not want to have kids at all as a child, teenager, 20-something. In fact, I kind of thought the point was moot since I'd never met anybody I could even imagine marrying, let alone having a family with, and I sure as hell wasn't going to do it on my own. When I finally did get married, at the ripe old age of 34, we were both unanimous in our ambivalence about having children, until we finally decided that it was now or never.
I continued to be ambivalent throughout my first pregnancy. My husband was very ambivalent throughout my second pregancy.
I was lucky--We are happy with our decisions and think our kids are the best. However, it could just as easily have gone the other way. There's no tried and true formula; this is an intensely personal decision.

If you know you want to have kids, that's great. If you know you don't, that's also great. If you want to and can't, that's heartbreaking. But it's really nobody else's business but yours.

I don't read this thread very often, but there's not a lot happening in the other ones (I think everyone is over in the Olympic Games forum).

Anyway, I agree that it is no one elses business whether you have no kids or a dozen kids. Provided of course, if you have a dozen kids that you can afford to raise them and not rely on government handouts to do so.

I have 3 children. One and 2 were planned. Boy and girl, I was happy, that's it I said. But I always felt there was someone missing. I didn't consciously want another child. Two were enough. Totally unplanned and unexpected, number 3 came along. Suddenly I felt complete, I no longer felt that someone was missing. I am convinced that number 3 though unplanned was meant to be. A work colleague had the same experience, after her second child she had the same feelings that there was someone missing. It took her several years to convince her husband to have a third child, but again, after he was born she felt complete.

Family members then asked me if I was going to have another one to even things up. What a stupid reason to have another child, to even things up. The thought of having a 4th child still gives me the shivers 17 years later. I could think of nothing worse.

I too am Ice Blue. Which is fine with me if they are referring to the Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade flavor that they came out with a few years ago as it is my favorite. The odd thing is that I don't like raspberry drinks, I don't like lemonade but I can't get enough of this stuff.

pinkgodzilla, I posted this link to the Kool-Aid test a couple of pages back. (Yeah, I actually took the time to find it. I have no life.) Isn't anyone else Pink Lemonade ("wild and crazy at times, but calm and soft at others")? I'm so lonely.

To put my two cents in on the "kids or not" discussion, I always wanted at least 3 kids. But, without going into a lot of detail, I discovered some time ago that it's physically impossible. (And since I never married, adoption just seemed like an extremely difficult proposition.) I came to terms with that long ago, but what I really hate are those people that assume I made a choice not to have children. Hey, wasn't my choice! At my 20 year high school reunion, an old "friend" gave me a real hard time about the "selfish" decision I made. Some people need to remember that childlessness is not always a choice.

Yeah, right, this is me? I don't think so. I know how to focus when the deadline for the report I haven't started yet is 2 hours away, and no way am I cool, calm and collected then. Some people look up to me, only because they are shorter than me. Popular with the young crowd? Even my own kids don't like me sometimes.

Bubbacat I feel for you. A couple I work with were unable to have children. They tried IVF but that didn't work either. Adoption in Australia is pretty well non-existent, because so few babies are available. Overseas adoptions are ruinously expensive.

For those of us who are able to have children easily, we sometimes forget the agony and despair those who unable to have them go through.

Which is why I would never in a million years ask people why they don't have kids or if they are going to have kids. Why risk hurting someone badly just to make conversation?

Well, thanks to all of you for your kind words about the boy. He is pretty special.

Of course, my determined little racer also had a fifteen-minute meltdown at supper tonight after I scraped off some of the ridiculously large quantity of tartar sauce he had put on his fish sticks so... let's just say that in parenting, you gotta take the rough with the smooth.

According to the Kool-Aid test, I am Tropical Punch...wild and crazy. Heh! I may be sociable but I don't know about crazy. I'm one of the least spontaneous people ever. In fact in the poem that my fiance used to propose to me; he mentioned my "nurturing, yet disciplined ways". Later, I told him that was the nicest way of saying anal retentive that I had ever seen. Heh! And indeed, we called it "red" kool-aid regardless of flavor.

I never wanted to have kids until I hit my late 20s. Partly because I was determined not to do what my parents did. They were and are great parents but having a kid at 20 and 21 respectively, and two more kids (my brothers are fraternal twins) less than 3 years later just seemed to make life unnecessarily hard in my mind. Combine that with my naturally independent nature and I just focused on getting my degrees and starting a career that I truly love. Around 28 or so, I started thinking that I would like to have a child with the right guy. Knowing my personality, a marriage where parenting was 50/50 or at least 60/40 is the only way that it would work for me. Now at the ripe old age of 31, I finally found the guy that I want to spend the rest of my life with and as a bonus, he just happens to be a terrific father.

In addition to my step-son, we are planning on having one child of our own. And while I have no reason to suspect that I won't be able to get pregnant, you just never know until you get checked out and give it a shot.

Heh JenEx I did use the tried and true, tucker 'em out so they sleep in routine. After the festival and a bike ride to the playground, it was dinner, bath and bedtime. The kiddo slept for almost 12 hours.

Btw, all the special family items that you all have shared is making me misty. Many years down the road, I am getting my grandma's cake pan with matching metal lid that she has made me a chocolate cake every holiday since I have been alive. I don't care for pie so at the holidays she always makes a chocolate sheet cake just for me. My mom has promised me her VERY old Joy of Cooking cookbook, as it has the recipe that I first used to make chocolate chip cookies.

There were things of my mom's that I thought my neice should have, because she's 12 and my mom's alzhiemer's had been so hard on the grandkids. But most of the household things are still with dad.

The only thing I wanted were her scarves. She used to demonstrate scarf clips at Christmas at the mall, and she had beautiful scarves. But going through her things with dad (who insisted I take sweaters three sizes too small for me), we couldn't find the scarves.

Just before I left for my presentation in Paris, my dad found the box. And so when I spoke at the Raphael, I was wearing a beautiful hand painted silk scarf that was my mother's. Way cool.

I'm Tropical Punch, which is okay. But my favorite was Cherry.

I've never wanted children. And would have been a high risk pregnancy if I ever had. One day a Muslim cab driver moved the conversation from my being on the way home from work to my not being married and not having children and then got all into how even Sarah bore Israel in her old age and it was never too late. That's what I get for not reading in the cab.

My two great aunts used to run a small candy shop out of the front room of their house. This was back in the day, and they also made fudge and ice cream to sell.
I have one of their original fudge pans. I treasure it, although really, it's nothing special.
Speaking of food, quick question: Is the term Hoodsie Cup a generally known term, or is it a local New England thing?