The other day, Scoresby and I were talking to each other at work via AOL Instant Messenger. We were talking about something that made the baby topic come up again, about the movie "My Neighbor Totoro," about how it makes us want to have a kid to show it to, but that we don't think of it as a "kid's movie"... that we don't think of anything as only "for kids" because we don't think of kids as different from us. It struck me that this is the best possible attitude toward children. Not to talk down to them or think of them as just kids or any of the negative, condescending things that some people say and think about children. We talked about how we would treat a 4 year-old as an equal and not as a child. About how a baby for us wouldn't be a thing that we own, but a new person with their own opinions and thoughts. We've talked about it many many times, but it never felt right until this moment, via IM. It just became very clear to me that we are ready to have a kid. Not to have a baby but to have a person.
So... there we were. We decided to have a baby while talking on Instant Messenger. I started to cry and typed, "i am crying". Now, anyone who knows me knows that I wasn't always this easy to make this decision. I am not a girl who loves babies. I am a 29 year-old who has never wanted a baby. In my family, when someone annouces they are pregnant, I say, "Oh, I'm so sorry" or at least think it. When Scoresby and I have a kid, it will be the first planned pregnancy in my family.
And it will have been planned on IM.