You Know You're Done When...

My mother announced to me out of the blue the other day that she thought that I should have another baby.


I had no response to that.


Well, other than that word that I learned a few months ago-- remember? However, I didn't say, "Hell no!", I just said, "No, thank you."


She is my mother.

But it got me thinking again-- how can I be so sure that I'm finished? I've come up with a few good reasons:


1. I was late once this summer and, instead of feeling that little flutter of "could it be?" I felt what I can only describe as holy terror.

2. In a week or so, I MIGHT be turning 35. This is the age where you are considered "High Risk" and they have to do amniocentesis to make sure that your baby doesn't have two heads and stuff. I've heard that this "amnio" test thing hurts really bad. Hence, I must avoid it.

3. Speaking of pain... they say that you are ready to have another one when you forget the pain of the last one-- it's the body's natural way to encourage procreation. I haven't forgotten-- must not be ready.

4. In reference to the getting old thing, I must say that I need sleep more than I ever did before. If I had a baby, it would leave us with three options:

• I get up with the baby, live on very little sleep and one day snap and kill everyone around me.
  
• Layne gets up with the baby, hates me for it and eventually leaves me for some hot chick who refuses to have children all together.
  
• Emalee gets up with the baby, flunks school because she falls asleep all of the time, and grows up to work at McDonalds with all of the Mexicans, where she meets Jose' and all of my grandchildren end up speaking Spanish.

5. As we are self-employed and have no maternity insurance, having a baby would cost us like $15,000. We might as well adopt a two year old and save ourselves the baby stage. I saw these beautiful kids from Chile' the other day-- how do I get one of those?

6. I've gotten really used to carrying a purse and not a diaper bag-- I don't think that I could ever go back.

7. I turned the nursery into an exercise room.

8. Speaking of exercise, I worked REALLY hard to lose 3 babies worth of weight-- I CAN'T go there again!

So, in spite of the fact that, when Dennis Smith painted our picture, he mysteriously added a 4th child into it, I have to say I'm done.

This is me with the extra child. It's not mine. It's one of the neighbor kids that are always at my house. Or maybe it's my niece Olivia-- she could come live with me any day.

Either way, I'm sorry, Mom, but I'm afraid that you're only getting three out of me.

Unless I can figure out how to adopt one of those cute little Chileans...