What was missing: deciding to have two kids

Brothers. © Cheese Curds and Kimchi

We picked up Little Man from school and loaded him into his car seat. Just an average Tuesday, with the exception that The Man was joining us for the pick-up.

Little Man chatted about his day and munched on his snack. Little Brother was saying "mamamama" which means food in Korean. I watched as The Man adjusted his rear-view to see the boys in the backseat and I saw his eyes get a bit teary. He looked long and hard at the Dynamic Duo and then turned to me.

"This is the first time they've both been in the car," he smiled. "It's a strange feeling of completeness."

***

As most of you readers know, decisions don't come easily for The Man and I. We over think them. Belabor them. Turn them around  and around until we are turned around.

Our decision to expand our family was no different. Before Little Man had come home we talked about having two children. After Little Man was home, we weren't sure about that at all. We loved having him and being a family, but the longer we waited, the more we questioned whether we were cut out to be a two-kid family. (Hell, there were days we wondered if we were cut out to be a one-kid family?!)

We told ourselves all of the reasons that we shouldn't do it: Little Man was getting very self sufficient; he was finally potty trained; we dreaded going through the grieving process with another child; we are getting pretty old to be starting with a baby again (we are tired all the time already!!); we are finally comfortable with our family dynamics; Little Man is a LOT of kid....can we handle another? can we afford to raise two kids? and do we really want to be outnumbered??

Then we countered with all of the reasons that we should: we want Little Man to know the joy (and sometimes strife) of having a sibling; we don't want him to be alone after we die; we want him to have a confidant, built-in friend (hopefully), and someone who has come to our family with the same background. Some of our fondest childhood memories are with our siblings. And when we picture ourselves five years down the road, we could see ourselves as a family of four. (Or five...but we won't go into that now...)

I'm not saying that we didn't want a second child. We just weren't absolutely positive about it. It seems like semantics, but really, they are two very different things. I seem to run into a lot of people who are 100% sure they want another child. I wanted to be 100% sure too. I mean, it's a huge decision and you'd better know for sure that you are ready!

Each time we returned to the "should we or shouldn't we?" question, I was hoping for some epiphany that would help me feel confident in our decision. But that AHA moment never came and instead, we spent months and months rehashing the same things.

Finally, we just had to make a decision. I was getting close to aging out of the Korean adoption program, so it was now or never. We filed the paperwork, feeling about 65% sure that we wanted another child, and hoping we'd grow to feel 100% sure as the adoption progressed.

***

Well, you know the rest of the story. Obviously we kept going, and obviously, we are completely thrilled to be parents again. As our time neared to bring Little Brother home, we absolutely could not wait to get him here. We were ready to be a family of four.

Looking back now, I think we really wanted another child but our doubts and worries kept us from recognizing that. And now that he's here, I finally understand why we kept returning to the to the one-child-or-two debate.

Something was missing from our lives. More specifically, someone was missing.

And now he's not. He's right here with us.

And the The Man put it perfectly.

It's finally a feeling of completeness.