I know I promised birthday pictures but for the first time ever I managed to actually enjoy a party without a camera glued to my face, so I have to wait until my super awesome BFF sends me the ones she took. I mean, I paid her absolutely nothing and ignored her the whole day and made her help prep all the food and didn’t let her drive home with her toddler until the middle of the night but GEEZE, how come she hasn’t uploaded the 1,000 pictures she took in the 12 hours she’s been home? Obviously I need a new best friend. Or maybe she needs a new best friend.

So until I can get all the dinosaurific details together, I thought I’d put up a quick post. Something light. Something fluffy. Like how I’ve been thinking a lot about how much I enjoy having 2 toddlers and no babies and maybe babies are kind of a lot of work and wouldn’t it be nice if I didn’t have to go through the tiny helpless infant stage anymore so maybe I don’t want any more babies?

Even saying that to myself seems kind of insane – I’ve ALWAYS wanted more than 2 kids. When I was little I imagined having a huge family. E and I have always planned to have at least 3, maybe 4, maybe more if we talking about it after a few glasses of wine. We already have names picked out – not a list, mind you, but actual names that are set for future kids.

But having 2 toddlers is fantastic. I am in love with these two kids at these two ages, both as individuals and as siblings. They love each other a heart-breaking amount. And they play together! Independent of me! I can get stuff done even when they are both awake! They eat food and sleep through the night (mostly) and can communicate their needs and help me with toddler-appropriate chores and sit still when I read them books. I like all those things. They’re getting to an age where we could go on a vacation as a family and it would actually feel like a vacation instead of a series of disasters interspersed with forced fun. And as cliché as it sounds, having a boy and a girl somehow feels kind of…complete. It’s a matched set! (So so so kidding.)

Luckily, I’m allowed to feel like this for a little while before I have to decide if I REALLY feel like this or if I’m just drunk with sleep and freedom. When I think about what not having any more kids means – never being pregnant again, never nursing again, never having all those baby firsts again – I’m definitely not ready to be done. But maybe I’m done for now. The problem is defining “for now” – 6 months? 12 months? Until Caroline goes to preschool? Until Little Evan is old enough to babysit? That’s a big range of “for now”. Which is OK! I have time to think Deep Thoughts about babies and toddlers and family size and what my life would be like with 2 kids or 3 kids or 10 kids. It’s just been on my mind a lot lately because I’m coming up on one of those big life events where you waste a bunch of energy thinking about all the stuff you haven’t done yet in life and realize you never will be a ballerina or a professional furniture restorer or a chef or a supermodel or a writer for SNL or best friends with Britney Spears and maybe that’s making me a little sad.

Yep, tomorrow I turn 30.

Obviously, by now everyone has heard of Occupy Wall Street. The other day, a friend posted a link to this chart, which is a great summary of what OWS is about and why they feel that way.

I’m not going to talk about the movement itself, but I am interested in something my friend said in reference to the data in that chart: “…to say that more women {with children under the age of 18} work today because they have no choice and not because they like having a career in a society where it is acceptable and because discrimination has been drastically reduced is silly.”

And my immediate response was: Well yes. But also no. And definitely. But really not at all. Why do women work? Or more specifically, why do MOTHERS work?  Can there possibly be a more complicated question?

The stickiest part of my friend’s statement is “no choice”, isn’t it? On the one hand, yah for feminism and the opportunity to have careers outside the home that aren’t just placeholders until we can snag a husband! On the other hand, pretending your cashier at Target would rather be making $8 an hour ringing up your face cream and Funions instead of at home with her own kid is bullshit.

I know plenty of moms who love their jobs, love their work, love having adult conversations around the water cooler about The Real Housewives of Wherever but who would quit and stay home with their kids in a HEARTBEAT if they suddenly won the lottery and could never work another day in their life. I also know that if childcare was free and I could have any job I wanted in the whole world I would absolutely leave my kids to be raised by strangers (said in your best judgy voice) a few days a week while I trained dolphins at Sea World (hey, sometimes your dream at 6 years old is STILL YOUR DREAM).

But real life doesn’t give everyone those options. If you’re a single mom? You have no choice. In a lot of cities there is no way to support a family on one income. Sometimes your partner gets laid off. Or maybe their job doesn’t offer health insurance. Or maybe they’re in school pursuing their dream and you’re supporting them – so you have no choice but to work to put food on the table but it is BY choice that you have chosen that choice.

There are days where my choice to stay home doesn’t even feel like a choice. SOMEONE has to watch these kids and we can’t afford a nanny. I mean really, if I had my CHOICE I’d spend one day a week at the spa getting massages and drinking cocktails so I could be the super calm, zen-like mother I aspire to be.

I don’t think “why women work” is something that can be measured or put in a pie chart or even summed up in a sentence. There is no box on a questionnaire that says “all and also none of the above” so using it as part of a your political movement can be tricky. I think the only thing you could get everyone to agree to would be that in an ideal world all women could make the choice they WANTED to make and not the choice they had to make.

So, why do you/do you not work?

Here’s my answer – I always planned to be a stay-at-home-mom eventually. We are able to afford it right now. I became a military spouse right after college and never established a career I would have wanted to go back to post-kids and I haven’t found anything I can do from home (besides blogging, obviously, which doesn’t exactly lead to BUCKETS OF MONEY.) So I think it is about 80% by choice and 20% not by choice although that’s the least scientific percentage ever.

A baby woke me up at 1 am last night, but it wasn’t the one who has a name and a face and a crib. It was a baby who is still just a fuzzy outline on a black and white print out, a heartbeat over the monitor, a life so new it can’t survive without me. It was my girl, my daughter, barely even half way here but already making herself known. I can finally feel the kicks and twists and jabs the ultrasound tech could see so clearly on her screen, the Kung Fu moves every pregnant woman anxiously longs for even as we make Alien references and complain about the punches to the bladder. They’re the closest thing to a voice our babies get, saying “I’m here! I’m living! Wait for me!”

They call this time The Quickening, a term I’ve always loved, which refers to the quickening of the baby’s movements from the slow, floaty flutters of a peanut sized fetus to flippy-floppy real-baby-sized twitches.  But for me it also refers to the quickening of time, the realization I am 20 weeks into a 40 week adventure, with 140 days (give or take) to go before I am a mother. A mother again. A mother some more. A mother of two.

The reality of that hasn’t even begun to sink in. I haven’t pulled the boxes of tiny gowns and onesies out to sort through and wash. I haven’t dog-eared the pages of my Ikea catalog with must haves for a new nursery. I don’t have a plan or a name or a calendar full of baby-prep classes. I just have a wish in my heart for her to be healthy and happy and whole, to come into our lives smiling and dancing, like I know she’s doing now in the warm comfort of my womb.

The truth is, none of the preparations matter. Having a crib doesn’t bring you a baby. Buying stuff doesn’t make you a mother. It’s a lesson every first time parent learns a few months too late, after the registry and the shower and the four hundred baby items crowding up your rooms. The fact that a parent cannot love a child with things is one of the fairest truths in this world – a millionaire has no advantage over me, nor do I rank over someone who lives in a mud hut and sleeps on the floor. All that matters is love and caring and patience and understanding, the kind of trial-by-fire lessons you only learn at 2 am when you’re totally failing and ready to give up and admit to anyone who asks that you must be the worst mother in the history of the world so would they please help you return this baby?

Oh, I have learned those lessons.

So for every week I forget to take a bump picture, for every day I don’t paint a nursery, for every kick I don’t take a moment to savor, I am sorry Baby Girl. But don’t be sad. I’ve kept all that love – the love-as-stuff, the love-as-money, the love-as-things – in my heart, where it grows right along with you, a little more every day.

Baby, I’m here. I’m waiting. I love you.