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.

From the mouths of babes

Everyone thinks their children are the smartest beings to ever grace the planet.  Roger* and I genuinely try to be realistic and objective when it comes to our one and only son. In fact, when he was two, we were scared he was leotarded because his vocabulary consisted of maybe nine words, including "ma" and "au revoir" and was largely comprised of unimpressive guttural noises coupled with his usual pissy facial expressions. (Holy shit, I need to note for the record that he was a real asshole from the time he was in utero until he was about 19 months, two weeks and three days, but who's keeping track?) At the time, our pediatrician said he should have a vocabulary of like 20 words and since 20 minus 9 is 11, we immediately drew the "leotarded conclusion" because that's like less than 50%, which is worse than failing. Now I'm supposed to be naturally gifted at math, but I'm not and as I tell people frequently, I also can't play the violin, I don't do nails, and no, I've never been an escort or in a porn flick. I can make a killer egg roll though, but that's compliments of Leeann Chin, who is actually Chinese, not Korean, but close enough. Therefore, I can't tell you off hand the actual percentage of 9/20 without pulling up the calculator app, but I know for sure it's less than 50%, so f*ck off.    

I'm really not sure what we were thinking. As if he wasn't going to talk or open up one day. In hindsight, it's completely absurd because both his parents are extroverts, right? Both of us can't shut up. One of us tries really hard to get the other one to shut up when the first one drinks and starts talking too much at a social gathering about how smart s/he is and how much s/he knows about everything, but I'm certain you know who is who here in this non-descript scenario. I'm pretty sure the kid just couldn't get a word in edgewise, but he eventually mastered the art of "interruption" + "talking over you like you're not there." This comes in handy in a lot of situations, but not at work. I've had to unlearn that skill over the past decade so people will think I'm an assertive professional, not a crazy loudmouth bitch.

Out of general curiosity, at what age do kids typically start in with  "I know that" and "I heard you"? Is age five normal? What about, "You should know that," and "What is wrong with you?" and "Why can't you be normal?" Just wondering.

Well, we're more than pleased with our son's verbal skills and mastery of the English language now. In fact, he's also learning Spanish and can count to ten in Korean (which has saved my ass more times than I can count in Mexican, let me tell you.) I'm going to make a conscious effort not to bog my blog with everything that comes out of his mouth, but he has more than made up for my "nausea/hives-wrought pregnancy," 20 hours of labor followed by a surprise c-section and for depriving me of 14 consecutive months of sleep with the endearing and hysterical things he now says on a daily basis. I really must declare - I LOVE THIS CHILD. "They" will tell you how utterly amazing it is to love a child and how you won't be able to comprehend how much undying affection you'll have for this little being, but you never really know until that moment when that little face looks at you with desperation and says, "You really don't have to walk me to my classroom anymore please...but I still love you, mom."

Tonight at bedtime, we discussed the roles of moms and dads. I asked him, "Well, what do you think moms do?" He replied, "Well...they...like to look pretty. They take a long time to do anything. Some of them drive crazy and...they wear dresses." I can't deny any of those things. He nailed it.

"Okay, what about dads?" He didn't need to think about this one at all. "Some of them are bald. They wear man shoes. They take a lot of dumps and they have a lot of underwear." (Check, check, check, and check, sorry Roger.  I love you, too.)

*I never asked Brent's permission (not that I need a man's damn permission to do or say anything I please) to be featured in this blog, so until I get his affirmative consent, I will refer to him as "Roger."