8 reasons to have an only child:

I copied this idea, and some of these points, from Renee at A Baker's Dozen. I just had to do my own version, because she was so spot on. I also added some gifs to illustrate my points. :)

So, here we go, 8 reasons to have an only child-

1. You only have to deal with this stage once:

Not my favorite age or stage.

2. You only have to go through this once (or not at all, if you adopt your only child):

This was me about 30 minutes before Nathan was born. For me, birth gets worse every time because of the anticipation.

3. You don't have to deal with the noise and the chaos (!!) that follows having multiple children in the house:

 

It is way harder than it may look to try to read to multiple young children at once. I almost always end up wanting to pull my hair out.

Nope. Sorry. Can't do it. Too much crazy.

4. The expectations placed on you by society will be way lower. If your only kid goes out with messy hair, a tutu over his or her jeans, mismatched socks, and sparkly shoes, people will smile and praise you for letting them "express themselves" or "be an individual." Go out with 3 or more kids, if just one of your children is dressed like that, you are clearly overwhelmed and neglectful. 

I don't even try to match their socks anymore. No shame. 

 

5. You only have to go through the trauma of potty training once. 'Nuff said. 

Not my kid. But he may as well be. 

What I would rather do than potty train.

6. Fostering independence is admired in only children. If your first child can buckle her own car seat, make herself a sandwich, and be depended on to do chores around the house or get herself ready for the day, she is praised for being bright and helpful. If you require that of any later kids, they are pitied for having to fend for themselves.

Yeah, because the Duggar kids have turned out to be total trainwrecks. With all of that responsibility they've been shouldered with their whole lives.

7. If your only child is sleeping or otherwise occupied, you can have free time to yourself without guilt or worry that you are neglecting someone else. 

8. You probably have the time and energy to make yourself look fabulous every time you leave the house.

At this point, I'm doing good just to have all body parts covered when I leave the house. Two words: train. wreck.

 Butttttt, since there are tradeoffs for every decision, having 1 child also means you miss out on so many awesome people. 

This amazing kid. #2.

This is Sammy, #5. What a total blessing he is to me.

These brothers. #3, 4, and 5. 

#6 and #7. How adorable are they.

And you miss out on seeing amazing sibling relationships. One of the best parts of being a mother, in my opinion...

And just plain awesome moments like this, you would miss out on if you only have 1 child...

I'm not trying to convince anyone to have a ton of kids. It's difficult, and I don't know how I do it most days, let alone moms with more kids than I have! There are benefits to both sizes of families- large and small. :)

7 Quick Takes

So I guess I'm not as active here as I was hoping to be (so many things to do and interesting things to read! No time to do it all!) but 7QT is a good excuse to jump back in, so here I am. You can find 7 Quick Takes every Friday at Jen's blog, Conversion Diary.

----1----

I did not realize I was a perfectionist until a really great conversation I had with my friend (who happens to be my boss!) a couple weeks ago. She suggested to me that what I have assumed is debilitating insecurity I've dealt with my entire life is really more like perfectionism. I have been thinking about this off and on since. I guess I didn't translate perfectionism to my inner life because I always thought it tended to be something career-minded or really productive people struggle with, and I have never considered myself to be a very productive person. I was never in sports, I never developed real talent in any extra-curricular activities as I was growing up. I did get really good grades, but that came relatively easy to me. I never worked particularly hard at any job during my teen years because of extenuating factors that I may go into at some point. I didn't finish college. So I never have seen myself as particularly productive or contributory. Even now, after producing 7 healthy human beings that I have kept alive and growing and relatively happy all of these years, I still don't see myself as particularly productive. I'm just a mom, a very tired, worn down mom, trying to keep everybody alive, the laundry going, the house running, the budget balanced, the kids decently educated, and all of that day-in-and-day-out monotonous stuff. But the more I think about my friend's suggestion, the more I realize just how very right she is. I am a total perfectionist! And it affects me every day of my life, in so many ways, mostly mentally and spiritually. In fact, the two areas where my perfectionism is the most damaging to me are in my parenting and my spiritual life, because these are the two areas that are the most important to me and that take the most out of me. Those are the two areas where I am absolutely terrified to fail. This, in turn, affects my emotional state and my ability to handle tasks in daily life. So instead of perfectionism helping me accomplish things more perfectly, it keeps me debilitated and afraid, always down on myself, second guessing everything, crippled in many ways. I have no idea how to get over this or attempt to make strides away from all of this. And both of my parents are therapists! Oh, the irony. 

----2----

On a happier note, the fall colors around here have been glorious. We have a large Sugar Maple right in our front yard (!) that I have fallen in love with. Along with providing hours of climbing for my oldest climber child, it provides amazingly-gorgeous colors in the fall. If we ever leave this house (it's a rental and we move on average once a year, so I'm sure we will), I will be very sad to lose this tree.

----3----

Jen's post about birth story haikus and then 6-word stories were just so inspiring that I had to give a haiku a try. I will try to combine the last 2 "takes" in this haiku. I will be writing up my kids' birth stories in haikus at some point! Jen is a genius.

Pretty sugar tree.

Perfection clothed in red leaves.

Thanks for all the fun.

----4----

I love genetics, especially being able to study genetics up close by having so many children! It's funny and fascinating to see how each child resembles different family members in different ways, and yet they are each their own, unique person. It's amazing that each human is an original creation and that we also contain traces of all of those gone before us. I found this link on facebook this morning and thought it was so cool. This photographer combines pictures of family members into one face. Just in case this link is no longer good after awhile, the photographer's name is Ulric Collette. Cool name.

http://www.boredpanda.com/genetic-portraits-ulric-collette/

----5----

Speaking of all of those gone before us, I happened to find out a couple months ago that I am a direct descendant of one of the Mayflower passengers! Not only that, but he was one of the 41 signers of the Mayflower Compact. His name was George Soule and I am related to him through my father's father's mother. :) I am trying to think of something extra special we can do this Thanksgiving to celebrate this new finding. Any suggestions? 

----6----

I love reading other people's 7 Quick Takes and often wish there were even more than 7, but when it comes time for me to come up with 7 things to write about, it's unbelievably difficult. I've been working on this on and off all morning. 

-----7-----

It's much easier to just post pictures, so here you go. A picture of a fly shaking hands with a moth. 

The post in which I finally confess to being a socialist.

Or, why a single-payer universal healthcare system is the best option.

Disclaimer: I have been a bit taken aback at how easily people make themselves into self-appointed gurus on whatever subject they happen to have an interest. I cannot count how many blogs there are (really popular blogs even!) where the blogger gives parenting advice like they are an expert and their oldest child is only 5. Or they only have 1 infant. And people fall all over themselves praising this person and their sage advice. And then there's me over here with kids falling out of my ears with, (excuse me), a shitload of experience on a variety of issues, and I question whether I have any right to share anything at all. Because there are tons of moms with way more kids than I have, or moms of older kids, who are way more qualified to give advice, and who am I to share anything at all?

But you know what? No more. Life is passing me by and I have opinions-- oh do I have opinions! And I have learned things and know...stuff....and....stuff like that. Look, I may never be the funniest or most eloquent or intelligent person in the room, but I can express myself, dammit. Call it the narcissistic American spirit or whatever you want, but I'm joining this crazy train.

So without further delay, here is my numbered list of why a single-payer universal healthcare system would solve the healthcare problems in our country:

1. Free market principles should not be applied to healthcare because healthcare has an inelastic demand curve. People will give everything they have to save or protect their loved ones, until they are left with nothing. That is what we are currently seeing happen. There is no competition when you are talking about people's lives.

2. That being said, the government CAN set and limit costs. The federal government would have even more bargaining power. This is likely why health care costs in other countries are so much cheaper (see video below for more of an explanation).

2. In the U.S. we are choking our businesses by making healthcare primarily an employer problem.

3. On top of employer-based health insurance crippling small businesses, it also forces severely-ill people to continue working so they can keep their healthcare. Or refuse to transfer to a better job because they will lose their healthcare. This is wrong.

4. As much as free-market proponents like to praise their own ability to charitably give, the reality is that a true free market has no provision for the poor and, let's be real, given the current cost of health care, would charity really go very far? Would depending on other people's charity be enough for you to sleep at night if your loved one's life was on the line? Many of these folks calling for no government intervention simply have not been in a position where they have lost everything due to health care costs (bless them). They tend to believe that those who are poor must be poor out of their own fault, they must not work hard enough. The poor are vilified and segregated and literally left to die. Therefore, a free-market healthcare system is un-Christian, at best. 

5. Many of the "long wait" stories are scare tactics. It is already the norm to wait 3-6 months to see many specialists, and it has been that way for decades. I am not opposed to offering the rich an option to pay more and get faster care. But let's make sure everyone gets fair care.

This is also why the current ACA will fail. It only comes halfway to being what we need- universal health care. 

Here is a good video on the subject-

Why I am nervous to write. Or express myself in any way.

The effect I hope my communication has on people:

The effect I worry my communication actually has on people:

 

Fall Schmall.

Am I the only one who gets a bit sick of all of the Fall adoration going on? This happens every year, and it's especially pervasive when one is on Facebook. Normally-sane, reasonable people completely lose their minds when Starbucks breaks out the pumpkin flavoring. They post incessantly about their pumpkin carmel macchiato-capuccino or whatever the hell (I know nothing about coffee), they post selfies holding their pumpkin coffee, selfies eating their pumpkin bread, selfies with their scarves on, selfies with leaves in the background, pictures of their pumpkin scones and cakes and casseroles coming out of the oven, pictures of just the toes of their boots on the sidewalk, I'm assuming with their feet inside (?). You'd think these people had never been through a change of seasons before.

Fall is nice, I agree. The weather becomes tolerable after the blazing, searing summer heat, the leaves change into pretty colors, the apples are being harvested around here, the air has a wonderful crisp. I love taking my kids to the pumpkin patch just as much as anyone else-- I will rock that pumpkin patch with the best of them. I love taking pictures of my adorable children with their cute jackets on, sitting with a pumpkin. I will tolerate the pumpkin carving. I love an (occasional) walk in the nice, fall air. Fall is nice. For a minute. 

The reality is that when Fall comes rolling around, that means Christmas is just around the corner. And you know what happens before Christmas? Thanksgiving. And you know what Thanksgiving requires? Lots and lots of cooking and baking. LOTS. And possible big get-togethers. Where you have to get all formal and make small talk and spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about and dealing with food. And remember what comes after Thanksgiving? Christmas. CHRISTMAS, people. Christmas means very little about Jesus anymore and everything related to buying as much useless, junky shit as possible to prove to your kids how much you love them. Or is that just me? I can understand why so many people get depressed during the holiday season. They must all be parents. With budgets. If I had no kids in the house I'd go to the holy days at Church, and I'd enjoy every second of the Christmas Masses, and I'd observe Advent in my own little heart, maybe buy a bottle of sparking apple cider, and call it good. With kids in the house? Good grief. It's insane. There are so many freaking activities to do during the holiday season, so many things we're supposed to craft and make and bake and organize and stay on top of and BUY to make the season "meaningful" and "special" for our little snowflakes. That is hell for an introvert like me who doesn't really like to expend much energy doing anything, let alone groupy-festivey-expensivey things.

Just call me grinch.

But you know what? Even though I have sworn that This Year we will keep it simple, we'll make it about giving and not getting, we'll stick to a contained and precise formula of gift giving that will remove 51% of the stress and expenses and keep the focus where it really should be during the holiday season- on baby Jesus and not making him cry with our commercialism and greed. Inevitably, I will get sucked into the excitement that permeates our home as the children count down the days and get geared up for Christmas, the light in their innocent eyes, the constant, incessant requests for gingerbread houses and Christmas lists and crafts (blah). And I will get over myself just a little bit and participate. I will smile as I see them smile, and laugh as they laugh. I will be truly joyful. And my icy-cold, Grinch-like heart might even grow a size or two. I will craft and bake (okay, maybe not bake, that's pushing it), and decorate and give. Because that's what good parents do. Right? They get over themselves to make things special for their kids.

And maybe this year, we can implement *one little* Advent ritual that we will carry with us over the years and then maybe next year we can implement *one other* tiny little ritual, until in a few years we will have a more solid foundation established of what Christmas should be about. Auntie Leila Style. ((Dear God, please let me someday be as sacramental and devout as Auntie Leila. Amen)) Even if, for now, it's just one devotional book we go through together, or one meal we make each year after Christmas Eve mass. Or something. But probably never an Advent wreath //defeated sigh.

Fall, bring it on. Just don't expect any boot selfies from this chick.

7 Quick Takes

I thought 7 Quick Takes would be a good place to start. I enjoy blog themes, they help organize my brain. Just don't expect me to do them on the day they're supposed to be done. 7QT is a Friday thing, today is Saturday. I might do another one tomorrow, or in an hour.

1. I'm loving this Pinterest board from the Bloggess.

2. I may have watched one too many Glozell videos this morning.

3. This is a self portrait I took the other day, for a board I'm on. Of course pictures are cuter with little cuties in them, so I included my adorable 3yo. Notice I'm still in my pajamas and robe. It was almost noon. That's how I roll these days. I blame it on my 4-month-old who is yet to sleep more than 2 hours at a time. Yes, I will complain about that any and everywhere I can. But he's worth it, of course.

I look a LOT like my mom in this picture.

4. I'm wondering if I will manage to update this blog regularly or add 50 posts all at once in a sort of brain dump, and then not update again in months, or ever.

5. I really enjoyed this post from Mama Knows, Honeychild. I had a bumper sticker in my room as a kid that said "When Satan Reminds You of Your Past, Remind Him of His Future" and was surprised to learn from this post that it is more than just a kitschy phrase!

6. Chad and I watched Bridesmaids, finally, last night, and we thought it was great. We're big fans of Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph from our SNL-watching days.

7. I have been off of facebook for a little over a week for a fast I'm doing, and I realized quickly how mindlessly I post on facebook. I felt quite bad for my friends that have to see my incessant posting about whatever rambles into my brain. I wonder how many of them have me blocked? But I love them, and miss them- my friends who live in my computer. :)


7QT is hosted at Jen's blog.