ten years ago and smiley photos

21Sep08

I’ll start by saying that I have no answers.

I really am both a hopeless romantic and a hopeless nostalgic. There will be more photos of the kids on this post - this time from ten years ago. Carl has, in the past year, digitised a whole bunch of our photos – (although not all of them), and made them available on flickr (see esp. the family photos). And now they are on my laptop as a screensaver and every now and then I see a photo and the memories and thoughts come flooding back… The other day I saw this photo – and then I started thinking about 1998.

Kids as donkeys

1998- Jack turned five and Isabel turned 3, although in the photo above Isabel is only just 2, and Jack is 4 1/2. Jack started preschool. Isabel was in childcare (can’t remember how often- 2 days a week?), I was at uni part time, Carl was working (we were all working but he was bringing in the money!) … we went to Tasmania on holiday for a month, Carl and kids all got chickenpox, no nappies!

Gingerbread dinos

I’m not sure whether much has been written or researched on when do parents decide enough children is enough? I have friends who say things “I always knew that I wanted three children”- and they have three children. I had no such plans really. I knew in my 20s that I didn’t really want children at that time -too busy and selfish doing other things. It wasn’t really until I met Carl that I did want children and I was almost 32 when I had my first child. I still can’t remember when we decided to have another child, but I am glad we did, but why did we stop there? Maybe we stopped because we had a healthy one of each sex?

I do sometimes ask myself this- and I’ve only reconciled myself to the fact in the last 4 or 5 years that I won’t be having any more children and I am a little sad about that…I feel like I’m only just now getting into the swing of it all.

Painted faces

I guess people decide on a family size based on a couple of major things - money and age. Women are having children later. That’s not all of the factors I know.

By when is enough, enough? I don’t know. I only know that I think if I had another child I would be full of knowledge from the other two children and the experience. What would it be like having a third child when the other two were older, say 15 and 12 (it’s not happening, just speculating) ??

Goodness, where is this all going? Not sure, parenting is hard and undervalued and constant and not for everyone, but, in between it all … truely wonderful.  It’s not always about smiley photos, but the smiley photos are great.

Iz, Jack & Alex (cousin)

 Kx

Filed under: Uncategorized   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: children, me, parenting