Elephants

Seriously considering having children has become a giant elephant in our relationship, both metaphorically and literally.  It started last year.  Sometimes I like to shop for vintage stuff on eBay and last year, I came across this adorable vintage figurine of a Mama Elephant with her two babies.  I bought it.  I didn't lie, per se, about what it was for, I just didn't go on and on about it.  But the truth was, I bought it for a nursery.  Not one I'm currently decorating.  Or even one I plan on decorating in the near future.  But I figured I would never find it again and if I wanted it for a someday nursery, best buy it now.  I haven't really thought about a nursery since.

Then, a few months ago, I was in Target.  They had these adorable animal shaped chalkboards in my favorite place in the store: the dollar bins at the front.  Like the elephant figurines, I figured it I wanted them for that nursery one day, I'd better buy them when they were still around.  I bought four and hid them with the vintage ceramic figurines.

It's all become reminiscent of my early wedding planning, the stuff I started doing before we were even engaged (including starting my wedding planning blog, Not the Marrying Kind...yes!  Shameless self-promotion!).  Before I was asked and answered and became affianced, I would look at wedding planning blogs and magazines and bookmark them in a folder ever so cleverly titled "Secrets & Lies."  That's not mysterious AT ALL.  I should have named it something like Data for Work or something.  But I felt like I was sneaking around and doing something bad even though we'd talked a great deal about marriage and I knew it was coming down the pipeline soon.

That's how I feel now.  We've talked about kids.  Oh, boy have we talked about kids.  And up until the past six months or so, I didn't feel like my body even wanted them.  But that has changed.  The past six months I've definitely had physical and mental automated responses where I quite literally craved having a baby.  It's so freaking weird.  I mean, I know that's my "biological clock ticking."  But, who the hell would have seen that coming from the girl who made her sister tell her about giving birth as a form of birth control??  Seriously.  I'm the same girl who all throughout undergrad had NIGHTMARES about getting pregnant and having to tell my family.  And I'm the same girl who feels extraordinarily reluctant to have children, despite the perfectly comfortable marriage, the financial ability, and all the other check, check, checks you go down before you get yourself knocked up.

So the real question is why the hell am I buying elephants for a baby's room that doesn't even exist?  If I know I don't really want kids or at least not for a while, then why am I buying things for the unwanted child's non-existent room???  And don't say hormones.  That's not an answer.  : )

Welcome to Not the Parenting Kind!

This is a sister site to my marriage and wedding blog Not the Marrying Kind. I've been plotting and planning this blog's inception for some time and am super psyched to finally get it up and running.

It's ironic that I would start a second blog in the middle of a bit of a blog drought on NTMK, but part of the drought was because I was getting bored writing about marriage and weddings. I still love it, but I was itching to write on parenting and children. I knew I wanted to do that here, and not on NTMK, and so put off writing a lot on NTMK while I dreamt up this site. And now it's here!

The two sites look extraordinarily similar intentionally. They are meant to be sister sites, that you would read in conjunction with each other. Marriage, weddings, and various topics of interest are covered on Not the Marrying Kind and parenthood and my reluctance to jump into it are discussed here. I hope you'll join me in this venture. I can't promise I'll update here as frequently as NTMK at first, but I promise to make it worth your while when I do. : )