Alot of people tell me that you need to have one to understand the joys of having your own children.

Being a father with two young children (son 3, daughter 6) I can say with confidence that I never thought I’d be ready either. We kept saying that we would wait until we were “financially ready”. Well, that never comes. And when we WERE ready, we found out that we were going to have difficulties getting pregnant. It took 10 years after we were married..so, we were 34 when my wife became pregnant with our first. So, here we sit with a 6 and 3 yr old and we feel old as dirt. Now we are saying that we wish we would have been able to had our oldest when we were maybe 26 rather than 34-35.

Will you have unrealistic expectations of your children? HECK YES! I expect my children to be perfect wooden indians when we have company, or we are out in public. I expect them to not wrestle; I expect them to not spill grape kool-aid on the couch and the tan carpet. But, when it happens, I have to remind myself that they ARE kids…I wasn’t perfect either as a kid.

I can hope that my son will love sports as much as I do, when he gets old enough. Right now at 3yrs old, he loves a toy (Nicole might know what these are) called PollyPockets. Umm…I think those are really geared towards girls. I just laugh when he wants to play with my daughters barbies. He is only three…to him, they are just toys. No gender based ideas.

I grew up in a house with 4 brothers, my mom and dad. My dad was in the Navy and we didn’t have a lot of hugging going on. So, I was glad that my daughter came first. She is a hugging, snuggling machine. And I love it. I wondered if I could be that way with my son. And, you know what? I am. I can admit it. And, I think he’ll be a better person for it.

Dang, I’ve rambled on and haven’t even hit the tip of the iceberg, but I think you get the point.

I gotta run though - I need to go get my belt and give some kids a lashing! haa… Just kidding!

You are a pretty level-headed person. You’ll be fine.