When are you planning on...shutting your face?

At least once or twice a month, someone asks me when/if I'm planning on having another baby because people just do not seem to be satisfied with the fact that Brent and I have an only child. I know that every human being on the planet can relate to some form of questioning about when they plan to reach the next logical milestone in their lives that they obviously haven't reached yet. Single people need to date.  Dating couples need to get married. Married people need to get knocked up and people with kids need more kids and more kids, etc. Everyone asking these questions really just needs to shut the hell up because people inevitably have good answers and the reasons all begin with, "No. Because it is none of your fucking business, that's why," and maybe they end with a tragic or completely disgusting explanation that would make you wish you'd never even asked in the first place. Did you ever consider that possibility?

Most of the time when I hear this line of inquiry, it's in an elevator. No one, especially Minnesotans, likes silence in the elevator, so we will fill the air with nervous or mundane conversation. (This totally reminds me - ask Brent to tell you about the time he purposefully farted in an elevator in Las Vegas.  Hilarious story.) I know I've been guilty of striking up mundane conversations myself, but I generally try to avoid the "When are you planning on [insert thing the person hasn't done yet]?," unless I'm intoxicated or you're ridiculously attractive (then I will ask you a lot of stupid things that are none of my business).

Someone asked me the "When are you going to have more kids?" question today and I know she meant well, but seriously. Look, I think my kid is incredibly freakin' awesome. He's clearly my best "unplanned enormous life event that resulted from too much alcohol and poor judgment about my birth control choices" ever and I wouldn't change a single thing in my history if it meant voiding his existence, but we are sooooo good with one and quite frankly, I think he is SOOOOOO good with being "the one and only." He gets our undivided attention and as we've explained to him, "You can't have as many toys and you can't go on cool vacations if we have to buy diapers for a baby." Yes, we really have told him that because it's absolutely 100% true.

Like for instance, instead of us taking him to Tulum this March, we'd be mapping out a road trip across South Dakota. I don't have anything against South Dakota. In fact, our family road trip to South Dakota is one of two major vacations Family Keilen took back in the day. Yeah, we did the whole Wall Drug, Black Hills thing. I do recall getting in a wee bit of trouble on that vacation for spending my meager allowance on the infamous "Truly Tasteless Jokes" book.  I think I was maybe 10 or 11 years old at best and I was secretly reading the jokes to my younger brother, Josh, who would've been 6 or 7 if my memory serves me correctly. Anyhow, my mom discovered the book and shit got real after that. I remember her lighting into me something serious and then one of my parents made me discard the book in the dumpster behind the hotel. Then, they lectured me relentlessly about what a sick individual I was to find those sorts of things funny and I felt ashamed and awful (and I bet they dug that book out of the dumpster and were laughing at it later on after we went to bed), but now that I think about all this, I fucking hate South Dakota. And clearly, mom and dad, that book did NOT ruin me like you said it would!  Look at how awesome and normal I turned out.

And so, if anyone ever asks me again why I'm not planning on having anymore children, the reason is South Dakota.