For this post to make sense, I have to take you back in time a couple of years.
Once our family was reunited and we moved here to Wisconsin, David and Mary became obsessed with having a baby brother or sister. David had realized that Mary wasn't a baby anymore, and he was concerned there was no baby in our family, as every family must have a baby! So David, of his own accord, would pray sometimes for a baby. Plus, he picked out the perfect name: Conifer Strawberry. Meanwhile, Mary was obsessed with having a baby sister. So every night she prayed for a "girl baby." Not a boy baby, she told God, though she would try to love a boy baby but a girl baby would be better so He'd better help David love the girl baby because David would probably want a boy baby but it was going to be a girl baby.
Their longings and prayers left me alternatively swooning and panicking.
Then, suddenly, last March the begging and praying and longing stopped. One night at dinner, David and Mary announced they had something to tell us. (As if they had been conferring together. Had they? Aren't they a little young to be conferencing together to conspire against us?)
David and Mary politely informed us that when they are big and go to college and don't live at home anymore, we can have two more kids so we won't be alone. But NO MORE KIDS until they go to college.
So you don't want a baby? I clarified.
Only AFTER we are in college. Then you can have two.
Well, thanks for letting us know.
You're welcome.
And that was that.
I got a good chuckle out of it. But most of all I was relieved. Because by that point it seemed highly unlikely a baby would be joining our family anytime soon. If ever.
David and Mary remained firm in their insistence of no more babies.
So it was with trepidation that, a few months later, Greg and I shared the bad news . . .
