Dogs and Babies Aren’t Exactly The Same

Today is October 6. We are approximately 42 days away from my 25th birthday. (It’s November 17th, for those of you who aren’t good at counting.) I graduated from college two and a half years ago. I started a job a few weeks after that. I married a very handsome man a month or so later. Which means I have been married for a little over two years.

That handsome man and I bought a house almost two years ago. November 16, 2007 to be exact. I changed jobs a few months later to do work that didn’t make me want to jam a pencil in my eye. In January of 2009 one of our clunker cars bit the dust and we spent a long (ha!) 48 hours carefully deliberating and test driving one vehicle and visiting one dealership before purchasing our first SUV, also known as a baby-mobile.

Do you see where we’re headed? Most people do. Graduated, jobs, married, house, car… what’s next?

My blog. In the timeline of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Hurst, the blog actually came before the SUV. But it has taken on a whole new life and is now a much bigger part of my life than it was 9 months ago. So I would say that Roots & Rings is the next big event in our lives. But obviously blogging isn’t really on most people’s “Things To Do As I Grow Up” list. Most people’s next step would be a baby.

No this isn’t the post where I announce to The Internets that I am pregnant. I am not. So settle down and just read my story.

Stephen and I have been in open discussion about babies since we got married. It was never a talk that scared us. We figured we’d wait about two years and have a baby. (Incase you already forgot the timeline, we are 3 months past the two year mark and we don’t have a baby. Sometimes people don’t know what they are talking about when they set goals.)

A few months ago we went to Home Depot. In the back of the parking lot was a truck with a dog crate next to it. They had a sign propped up against the truck that said “PUPPIES.” We got out of our baby-mobile and intended to walk into the doors of Home Depot but somehow found ourselves walking toward the truck. As we were walking across that parking lot, Stephen enthusiastically said, “Oh! We could get a puppy!” I laughed at his ridiculousness and told him, “Okay. You have a choice. You can have a baby or a dog.” I could see the grin on his face, “Fine! A dog!” I knew his dirty tricks, “I don’t mean that you get one now and one a year from now. You get one. Period. And you don’t get another until the other is gone.”

Meaning this: Unless the Lord thinks I can handle twins (please, oh please Lord, don’t think I can handle twins!) I will not have two babies at once. I will not have a baby and get pregnant immediately afterward so that I have kids extremely close in age. I know my stress and migraines and massive knots in my shoulders- I know I can’t handle that. So this also means that I will not get another dog (Rookie was already part of the family) and then have a baby. The dog would have to be gone by the time I visited the idea of a baby. Are you following me?? The Hurst family will include a man, a woman, a dog, and a baby. Once that baby turns into a little kid, we’ll visit the baby idea again. But another dog does not fit into this equation unless the baby doesn’t, or unless the other dog doesn’t. I can’t see either of those happening. Hence, my proposal to Stephen which I will repeat now because this was quite a tangent and your eyes are probably glazed over. “Okay. You have a choice. You can have a baby or a dog.”

We played with the puppy but chose not to get it. Partially because we’d rather have a baby. And partially because the puppy was a pit bull and I will NEVER have a pit bull and a child in the same house. I don’t care to hear your thoughts and feelings on the matter. This is my opinion and I can choose that. Moving on.

Every now and then we experience what it’s like to have two dogs. My mom’s dog comes to visit often. Our pups play and sleep and bark and have a merry time. The two dogs have two separate potty rituals and two separate morning rituals. It makes me more responsible to have two of them around. My dog is chill. She sleeps when I tell her to go night-night. She eats when I say “good girl.” She potties when I tell her to go potty. She’s easy. Molly is different. She’s tiny and prissy. She sleeps when she feels like it. She eats about once a day, one kibble at a time. And don’t even get me started about her potty.

Molly is more like a baby than Rookie. She needs more attention and love. She can’t be alone long. If you’re not watching her, she’ll put anything in her mouth. And she’s scared of storms. She stayed at our house over the weekend and it rained the entire weekend. It was good baby practice. Or maybe good birth control? (Just kidding, mom. Please let her keep visiting us!) 

I love cuddling with her and cradling her like a soft little baby. When I do this it makes me think that maybe we could just get a tiny puppy to cure our baby fever and postpone the expensive step of expanding our family. But then I wake up in the morning to find out that Molly is so scared about the storm that she’s pooped a pile of tootsie rolls in my closet. At least I know my future babies won’t do that!