Perfect Gentlemen

I just love my boys. GK and I have talked quite a bit about adopting girls (yes, plural) and I was just getting pretty fixated on it. Not that I felt ready or anything, not that I could say for 100% sure that we'd do it. I certainly had no intentions of beginning our journey on that road without GK's full partnership. But since I'd recently braided my little neighbor Ell's hair (her fine wispy blond hair into a french braid, a near impossible task) and since I just completed a very detailed portrait of 2 amazing twin girls, and lastly- since GK and I had also recently purchased toys for a donation, one of which included My Little Ponies- one of my all time favorites from childhood (plastic pastel colored chunky horses with tattoos on their behinds) and since, lastly, that included walking into the girl section at Toys R Us, shelves upon shelves of bubblegum pink, hot pink, baby pink, pink, pink... well, I had girls on my mind- girls for me, for our family, to be our daughters. (Not that I've ever been a big fan of pink, it's a merchandise girl color, unfortunately.)Pregnancy & childbirth are unlikely to happen again in our future. Not because I doubt we could get pregnant- on the spectrum of childbearing, we fall into the very fertile category, but our category includes very hard pregnancies. It's like you can't have your cake & eat it, too. You gotta pay up somehow. From the first discovery of pregnancy, I'd have to cease any and ALL forms of exercise, thereby sealing my fate of a ballooning pregnant woman. Any strenuous physical activity could cause the little peanut to fall right out of me. So we wait pensively until 12 weeks, when I get to have cerclage surgery. Ouch. And, as if "surgery plus" isn't enough, I still get bed rest. Lovely. I mean, it's fun and all for the first couple days, but it gets old quickly. I can't even imagine bed rest with two children running around. My poor mother couldn't do it and take care of me, too.With all the exercising I have been doing, I can imagine the frustration of seeing all the muscle melt away while I lay around on bedrest.Anyway, pregnancy is just not in the planned cards. However, if pregnancy visited us despite all our measures to prevent it, I would have to expect a boy. So that I could accept either gender.Well, with a week like last week, with Zee's consistent nightly wakings with coughing, his strange grunt exhalations (is it asthma?), and his so active self that has me either performing clown tricks, acrobatics, jungle gym maneuvers, or hiding from him :) I have to say, I already have a full life. And in my marriage, we have a thing about wanting to grow- you know, take it higher- every now & then, and it can be a bit exhausting. In a nutshell, we've decided to take our marriage from a "divide & conquer" mentality to a "share the pain" mentality. We tend to go in separate directions in order to go faster when we are getting stuff done. But then we don't talk as much, share life as much, and we got married so that we could share life. I want to share it with him. He and I are so different- God basically had to shove me towards him and say- Say yes to this guy, and he really is everything I'd hoped for. Other than the times we totally bum each other out, he is foundationally a great guy. He's loyal, he sticks with things, he's trustworthy, dependable, kind, and he's There for You. He checks out sometimes, but so do I, and when you remind him, he checks back in. So, we're working on approaching our life tasks with partnership in mind, like let's decide this together, not just having him sign off on decisions I've made, but each of us thinking through things, being involved in every aspect of our together lives. I could go on describing until I think I am being completely clear, but that would take to long & I gotta take Enn to school soon.Anyway, with all these things on our minds, and having several friends who I am close to who are going through a whole lot, I just have no reserves. I felt yesterday like I was just a shell. Don't pressure me with anything, I will crumble.I feel that my life is in a phase where I am being sculpted into a better work of art than I am right now. It hurts, it's hard, but there's purpose to it.So- back to adopting two girls- sisters- twins? I can't even go there anymore. It is off the discussion table for now.But- on the table- I want an Airedale Terrier. I want a dog. I want a puppy.I am insane.