we both decided on two before we got married. haha, i actually had a 5 year plan when i was 20 and we'd only been dating a few months... i'm very lucky he didn't get scared off and run away! we ended up pushing the 5 year plan back a bit and then i thought i'd want to space our two at least 3 years apart. then we actually got pregnant and now i'm thinking i want another one sooner than 3 years and gulp... maybe even more than 2!
our original plan to have only two was based off of wanting to have the disposable income to travel, to keep up our fairly expensive creative pursuits (me printmaking, him photography) and just to have a more relaxed pace of life in general. we are both social introverts... i kind of hated having siblings at all, and he has one sibling... we both would have been happy with being only's. i liked visiting homes of people who had large numbers of kids, but never wanted to live there, if you know what i mean.
however, as i get older, family becomes more and more important. much as i have my differences with my two sisters, spending our first summer together with my parents, sisters,our husbands and the first two grandkids was really amazing. i had this vision in my head of 5-10 years down the road, each of us with a couple more kids and this great happy family gathering. it would be the extended family that we only got to experience once or twice when we were young (since my dad's side is frankly disfunctional and no one really managed to get together that often, and my mom's side has no other children our age)...
both reasons (wanting to have time/money/energy to do the things we love, AND wanting to have lots of siblings to have relationships with) have plenty of merit. i know my sister is planning on 5-6, and the positives of having a big happy troup of kids to play with are hard to ignore.
i honestly think we will have to play it by ear. my dh would be very hard to convince if i did decide to have a third. it would either have to be an oops or twins or something to get him over that initial hump. but, since our dd is only 7 months and i'm already having crazy newborn lust, i may have a hard time stopping at only 2.
our original plan to have only two was based off of wanting to have the disposable income to travel, to keep up our fairly expensive creative pursuits (me printmaking, him photography) and just to have a more relaxed pace of life in general. we are both social introverts... i kind of hated having siblings at all, and he has one sibling... we both would have been happy with being only's. i liked visiting homes of people who had large numbers of kids, but never wanted to live there, if you know what i mean.
however, as i get older, family becomes more and more important. much as i have my differences with my two sisters, spending our first summer together with my parents, sisters,our husbands and the first two grandkids was really amazing. i had this vision in my head of 5-10 years down the road, each of us with a couple more kids and this great happy family gathering. it would be the extended family that we only got to experience once or twice when we were young (since my dad's side is frankly disfunctional and no one really managed to get together that often, and my mom's side has no other children our age)...
both reasons (wanting to have time/money/energy to do the things we love, AND wanting to have lots of siblings to have relationships with) have plenty of merit. i know my sister is planning on 5-6, and the positives of having a big happy troup of kids to play with are hard to ignore.
i honestly think we will have to play it by ear. my dh would be very hard to convince if i did decide to have a third. it would either have to be an oops or twins or something to get him over that initial hump. but, since our dd is only 7 months and i'm already having crazy newborn lust, i may have a hard time stopping at only 2.
