Wow, what a weekend. Saturday, DD and I went horseback riding with her Brownie troop. SO much fun!! I love this time in her life. We can do stuff together. She did great! No fears whatsoever. I am in awe of my child sometimes.

Saturday evening, the three of us went to some friends' home for a cookout and a little guitar playing (no talent here, other than listening!). This couple are about 2 yrs younger than DH and me, and have an 8 mo old daughter (that's her with my daughter above). My DD just fawned all over this baby. Made me a nervous wreck. I was hoping so badly that when I saw that baby, something would jump in my soul. Well, it did. It was fear. It was relief that I was thru that.

I cried during Mass yesterday. I went by myself (dd was not feeling so hot), sat on the front row as usual. (DH usually sings, so it's just habit to sit up front.) Well, Father Ted's homily is naturally about birth and rebirth and the innocence of children. It is Easter season, ya know. So he points out one of the younger kids to come up front. Little Samuel is the next-to-youngest of 11 children. His mother is my age. Father Ted asks us, "What do you want for Samuel? What do you wish for him in the future?" And I just lost it. I felt like the most selfish bitch in the world. DH and I are exactly the kind of people who SHOULD be having children, to raise and love and send out into the world to make it a better place. And the only reasons I don't want a baby are very selfish ones. Am I a self-centered, selfish person?

So I curled up in DH's arms last night and cried and poured out my heart. Can I just tell you that I am married to the most wonderful man in the world? He asked me the reasons why I wanted another child. I said, for DD to have a sibling, for him to have another child, and so I wouldn't have all my eggs in one basket (for lack of a better way to put it). He said, these are all reasons why everyone else thinks you should have a baby. Why do YOU want to have another baby? I said, I don't.

I don't. It came out of my mouth before I knew it. It is my gut feeling. But I have such a bad history with major, life-changing decisions, doing what I want instead of what I should. So naturally, my second gut feeling is that I'm wrong.

DH says I'm too hard on myself, that I'm taking on the weight of the world. Neither decision is right or wrong, he says. And even if there is one right decision, we will never know if we chose the right one because we can only take one fork in the road. You either do it or you don't. And either way, you're still gonna look back and play the "Shoulda-Coulda-Woulda" game.

See why I love him so much????