Let me start off with the fact that we knew when we got married we wanted to have a large family, but were going to see what it was like as each kid came along. We had our first two kids 17 months apart and knew we were still wanting another. We waited until our oldest started school so we wouldn’t have 3 in daycare. We had our third child about 3 years later. I finally had my beautiful baby girl. She was perfect. About six months after having her we decided we were done. We had two boys and a little girl, we were set. I gave away EVERYTHING:bouncers, swings, girl clothes, boy clothes, maternity clothes, breast pump, etc.! I was done with all the baby stuff and all the stuff that didn’t fit my kids anymore. I CLEANED OUT MY HOUSE!
Not too long after it all got cleaned out I started thinking about babies again, literally two to three months after the big clean out. This also is about the time Amelia started walking. I didn’t have a baby anymore. Jake and I started talking about what the 4th child would do to our family. What that would change with our family of five. We had the two boys sharing a bedroom and Amelia had her own room. That would work with our 3 bed 2 bath house, but what would happen if we had another boy. Three boys sharing a bedroom sounded like frat party gone bad. We needed another girl to balance it all out, what are the odds of that. We would be at one of the boys soccer games talking about what life would be like with an infant at the soccer games, and remember we’re carrying around a 9 month old at this point. We would be at the grocery store with all the kids talking about adding a 4th to the crazy grocery store scene. We would be packing for a trip to go see friends talking about road tripping with another baby. We would be at a restaurant saying, well five is almost six and we already have to wait extra because were more that your normal four person table. We would be at Six-Flags and talked about five being an odd number. We would always have a person that would have to sit by themselves, or all the kid would have to bring a friend so nobody was left out, and who can afford that. The odd numbers became more of an issue than I ever imagined as well. It was then I noticed my husbands aversion for odd numbers. We couldn’t have an odd number on the volume, therefore the odd number family was also becoming a bigger discussion.
After a few months of just simply talking about what it would look like logistically, we figured out we had already opened ourselves up to another baby. Jake and I sat down together one night and finally said “well why not.” It’s not like we’re going to look back and say, that last kid was really the downfall of the Wolfpack or I wish we wouldn’t have had that last one.
We are four years into our journey as a family of six. Don’t worry we did add to our house so we don’t have 3 boys sharing one bedroom, but it hasn’t prevented the frat party gone bad I’m afraid.
I can’t say every day is easy breezy, but I can say that a day doesn’t go by that I don’t thank God that he decided we needed to open our hearts up for another little boy.
