The Gap

There comes a time in your parenting journey when talk inevitably turns to when or if you should have another baby. For some that talk comes sooner than others.

Lately, Dave and I have been talking about the idea of having another baby. Punky is just about 11 months and it's gone from the whole "I wonder if our next kid is gonna be ugly because Punky took all our cute genes, this is way off in the future" kind of talk, to "Should we just do it now and get the baby stuff out of the way, better to be sleep deprived all in one big go rather than drag that shit out" kind of talk.

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Call us crazy, but we are leaning towards the school of 'let's get this shit done and out of the way' thought. We've always agreed that for us, about 2 years is a good gap, not too close but not too far apart either. The age difference between most of our siblings is 2 years and it seemed to work for our parents.(Having said that, neither of our parental units could keep it in their pants and we both have four siblings each, the range of Dave's family is 9 years, the range of mine is 10. We are NOT having that many kids!)

My only issue, is that because Punky is born in November, I don't really want to have another kid with a birthday super close to hers (some crazy-ass friend of mine had her kids a day apart, not mentioning any names *cough* Kelly HTandT *cough* and that was through no fault of her own, obviously, her kids just have no sense of timing, but she's gonna have some 'fun' around their birthdays in the years to come!) and so if we try to time it for 2 years we 'll end up with two birthdays right before Christmas, or knowing our luck, one on Christmas! 

So the question then becomes, do we wait and try for an early 2014 kid or go for it now and hope that things work in our favour and we get an October 2013 or earlier baby?

These little cuties are 9 months and a couple of weeks apart
Watching them play together on the weekend made me
want to give Punky a sibling so bad

Obviously biology and nature can't be controlled, and in the end it's gonna happen when it happens, but I'm not sure where I stand. TBH, I thought I may have been pregnant already, but no, that cow Aunt Flo was just taking her sweet time to get here. I was seriously having visions of two babies under 18 months and thinking I should book my time at the 'spa' (read mental hospital) a little early.

But then the old cow showed up and the visions of trying to wrangle two kids that couldn't talk or go to the toilet independently faded, and while I was a little relieved, I also wasn't. If you know what I mean.

Add to that the fact that Punky has started putting herself to sleep most nights and we may or may not have had a sweet night's sleep recently of 12 hours (don't wanna jinx it by saying too much!) I'm starting to think having them closer in age is maybe not that bad an idea. So that leads me to the conclusion that maybe it is time to just throw caution to the wind and see what mother nature has in store for us.

But I'm just wondering, for those of you with multiple kids, or those with siblings, what do you feel, for yourself, is the ideal age gap between kids? Did you have that specific gap on purpose or was Mother Nature playing silly buggers with you? Everyone has a different reason and I would love to hear yours. Add them to our list of pros an cons.

It's Friday! So I am linking this post up with the fabulous Grace for Flog Yo Blog Friday! Make sure you get over there and check out the sweet floggers!