So far today I have managed to piss off my wife, annoy the oldest, upset the youngest, and make my daughter cry. I either need this day to end, or I need a do-over. And beer.

You cannot, it’s been pointed out more than once lately, “shrink” your own wife. I don’t think that’s what I do; in any case, I’ve never practiced clinical psychology so technically… I think it would be more accurate to say I’m a general pain in the ass, and go overboard trying to figure her out because I don’t want to repeat past mistakes. I don’t want to make assumptions and be wrong enough to make things worse. I do it anyway, and for that I will grab hold of the stereotype and blame gender.

My impulse is to fix things, even when I clearly understand I can’t. I want to understand how things and people work. To that end I drive my family a little bit nuts and they’re usually tolerant of it. Char knows me well enough to distract me with something else to contemplate when I’m getting on her nerves, but like she said, at three in the morning combining my tendency to over analyze with her current sensitivities (and I’m the first to admit she has every reason to be overly sensitive these days, with or without my marital cooperation) those two things aren’t a good combination.

I keep trying to put myself in her shoes: in pain, stepping back from daily routine, having to rely in someone else for help with everyday tasks, dependent on others for transportation and having to give up teaching TKD; she’s doing it without much complaint, she hides the pain from the kids, and truthfully I don’t think I could do it all. I’d be whining and more temperamental, and I’m certain my sense of self would take a giant nose dive.

I wish we could go back and start that conversation over, at a time when we’re both awake and thinking straight, but trust me, I get that I added to her list of things she has to deal with.

Here’s one of the wonderful things about my wife: while I’m still chewing on things, she’s over it and has moved onto something else. She forgives my stupid shit long before I can stop worrying about it. Considering the sheer amount of stupid shit I drop at her feet, that’s an amazing thing.

Another thing about my wife: she has no problems issuing ultimatums. Most of the time it’s for my own stubborn benefit and in spite of whatever misgivings I have, she’s almost always right in the things she puts her foot down over.

In that I don’t think I’m much different than our kids. I do and say some of the most monumentally stupid things, but at least they have age as an excuse. She balances me, and I learned a long time ago that if she gets to that point, it really is in my best interests to do what she says.

Resistance is futile. It gets me out of the doghouse early, anyway.

It’s after 4 am and I’m wide awake again. I had actually been asleep (since we decided that I would quit my job, I’ve been sleeping almost like a normal person) but Char woke me at 2:45 with the completely from-left-field-question, Have you ever considered adopting another baby?

After we adopted Kevin we discussed this at length. When we first got married I was positive I wanted a houseful of kids; if you asked me how many, my standard answer was “10” and it wasn’t as much of an exaggeration as it may have sounded. I wanted a big family and Char was not opposed to the idea; we had intended on having more kids.

Rachel’s birth was problematic, and during Char’s pregnancy we learned that she should not have gotten pregnant again after Alex was born. She had a bilateral uterus, and while she had managed the pregnancy with our first, a second child was not in her best interests; her doctor failed to mention this gem to us, and we went about life with assumptions of several pregnancies as easy as the first had been.

Rachel was due in March. In January Char was admitted to the hospital with the intention of long-term monitoring and keeping her pregnant as long as possible. On January 25th, her uterus basically split, and Rachel was born in an emergency c-section. Everything came together that day as if it was pre-ordained; I was in the room with Char, her doctor was less than 100 feet away at the nurses’ station, and she was in an OR in just minutes. If I had not been right there and her doctor had not been right at hand, chances are I would have lost them both nearly 13 years ago.

The disappointment I expected both of us to feel never surfaced. We had a 17 month old son and a beautiful newborn daughter, and neither of us cared that we were not going to have a houseful. We did not consider adoption seriously after that, because we had adjusted our notions of the ideal family and considered ourselves to already have that.

Somewhere around July the next year, Char’s father called with the surprising news that her cousin, her 13 year old cousin, was pregnant. This followed a scare from my niece, who at barely 16 needed someplace to live because for a few overwhelming weeks she thought she was pregnant, and my sister threw her out (my sister ranks right up there with my brother.) We began talking about adoption then, because Erin did not think that at 16 she had any business being a mother; when she realized she was not pregnant, just unfortunate, we stopped talking about it until the call from Brad.

Char’s cousin did not want to bring a child into her particular circumstances and she knew she was not mature enough; she would have had support from her mother, and we would have provided financial support if that’s what she needed, but the environment was less than ideal, and she wanted us to adopt the baby. She knew Char was married to “that guy” and had escaped their neighborhood, and she didn’t want to give up the baby to a total stranger.

Before we even knew of his existence, everyone else had decided that we were unquestionably Kevin’s parents. It didn’t require much discussion on our parts. When she got off the phone with her father and relayed to me what he’d called about, we both looked at each other and what we saw reflected back at one another was I hope to God you want this because I want it more than anything. Call it providence or serendipity, or whatever it might be, but it felt like something that was supposed to happen.

While we prepared for his birth, enduring all the legalities of adopting him and transitioning Rachel from the nursery into her own big-girl room, we began to discuss again the possibility of having the large family we had originally wanted. It seemed likely that we would be able to adopt one or two more, if we were patient and if we threw all of our resources at it. And the day Kevin was born, when we saw him for the first time and it felt every bit as much like seeing Alex and Rachel for the first time, we both decided that we wanted two more if possible.

Then Rachel hit the terrible twos in spectacular style, and one day we looked at each other and admitted, we can’t do this that many times. Alex had been stubborn at two; Rachel was a pint sized tornado spinning through our lives with a temper that matched her ability to scream, and she was, to be honest, so hard to handle that there were days we weren’t sure how we’d managed to get from morning to night without putting fists through walls in frustration.

We had three kids; that, we decided then, was enough. We knew that eventually Rachel would outgrow the terrible twos and that Kevin might be as easy to deal with as Alex had been, but we didn’t want to deal with another tempestuous, and often aggressively physical demonstrative toddler.

We also knew what was coming: the teenage years.

So my reaction when Char woke me up with the question about whether or not I had considered adopting again was Hell no. I love my kids, my daughter is one of the grand highlights of my life and I treasure every day with her, but from 2-4 she convinced me that the three kids we have is enough (she knows this; she takes pride in hearing stories about throwing applesauce at a bus boy in a restaurant and about the time she had a full blown, screaming, body flopping, arms and legs flailing meltdown at a church luncheon, where upon a frustrated priest seethed Shut her the fuck up.) It’s funny now, because she’s grown into a smart, funny, kind, and generous person who rarely raises her voice, even when her brothers are picking on her.

But Hell no was my reaction an hour and a half ago when asked if I ever considered adopting again. And I wanted to know why she woke me up to ask something she already knew the answer to. I suspected it had much to do with pain medication clouding her brain and lowering her inhibitions enough to bring up something she possibly really wanted, but no; she thought that by distracting me when I was mentaly fuzzy I might be more willing to give consideration to something she felt was a more pressing matter.

To quote a friend, file this under TMI. The easily offended and embarrassed won’t want to read any further. This is as personal as I’m ever apt to be.

Go here instead. It is more amusing than anything I have to say from this point on. The train wreck that follows is not amusing; it is mostly self indulgent personal catharsis and I think the only two people who would care about it anyway are the only two who have read through this already too-long post anyway. If you want the rest, you’ll need to click through.

If you do you’ll walk away thinking two things about me: I am an idiot, and I am a fucking moron. You'll be right.