By Vicki Hughes    Posted April 3, 2013

When you choose to be a one child family, you are going to have to explain yourself. Probably not as much as you would have to explain being a no-child family, but still, it comes up.

For those of us who do not live in China, a one child policy seems to raise eyebrows. People with lots of kids seem especially suspicious. A friend with four kids once asked John, “How come you only have one kid, and I had to have four?” Without missing a beat he replied, “Because we’re smart.”

Actually, if I had left it up to John we would have several cats, no dogs, and we would have used our disposable income to travel the world going to great surfing destinations, giving him drag racing lessons, and buying me ice skater outfits, which I assure you I would NOT wear, instead of buying braces for perfectly good teeth, and buying sushi for hoards of Chelsey’s teenaged friends, and forcing her to take family vacations that were lame, and not up to her thirteen year old standards.

Obviously, I did not leave it up to him. Instead, I contracted Baby Fever, from sniffing my friend Judy’s eighteen month old, and letting the little rat wrap her chubby fingers around my pinkie, begging me to dip the “fwench fwy” in the ketchup again. My biological clock went into overdrive, and all John’s objections to reproducing were out the window. He is the oldest of four, and I have no siblings. He knew more about the implications than I did.

To sway him, I used a similar approach I’d used with great success, to get puppies and kittens as a child. “You will never even know it’s here, I will feed it, and walk it, and I will love you forever….pleeeeease??” He said if I would shut up about it, and move out from between him and TV while The Winston Cup was on, we could get one. I thought he sounded a little stingy, but I figured we would jump off that bridge when we came to it.

Except I lied. He soon knew she was here, he was forced into feeding, and walking her, and quite a bit of wiping as well. I tried to keep him distracted with good food, batting my eyelashes, and making sure he got to watch the women’s ice skating during the winter Olympics. It’s called negotiating, people.

Having learned nothing from all those puppies and kittens, I was strangely shocked, and got really annoyed when she interfered with my sleep, and with all the poop I was expected to clean up. I discovered this was way more of a commitment than I’d realized. I’m flighty that way. Thankfully, John is a commitment kind of guy.

He was simply made to be Chelsey’s Dad. I can tell you with all sincerity, no other man on this planet could have done a better job. They “get” each other in their own eclectic way, seemingly passing cosmic notes, and nodding at each other like spies in the park. He voluntarily took the reins on many occasions, back before she morphed into the lovely adult I completely enjoy today, and kept me from selling her to the Professional Eye Rolling Association, to earn her own sushi money as their mascot.

Eventually, after I realized what I’d signed us up for, I grudgingly admitted, he was right, one was enough.

© Vicki Hughes 2013