Couldn't be any more excited

So I think we've pretty much filled up the Big News category for march, yes? Moving across the country, new job, new house, new school, oh, and another baby! Yes, we've got a lot going on.

We've only told a few people so far, and we've gotten a mostly shocked and surprised, but still very excited reaction. It's so unbelievable to me to be able to truthfully say "We're expecting our fifth child." because I never pictured myself with so many children.

When I met Nick he wanted two kids, and his absolute maximum was three, with the third child being an accident. After which both babymaking parties would be taking preventative measures to prevent further offspring. I didn't have an exact number when I was young, I wanted a minimum of two, probably three, four seemed perfect, and five only if we had an accident or twins. I was crazy.

Then Nick and I got serious and talked about it and decided to start with two and see if we even wanted more after that. So we had our boy and our girl, and we were the perfect little family, and for a long time (right up until I got pregnant, actually), I didn't want anymore kids. Nick did. He would totally give up his man-card every. single. time. we saw a little baby when we went out, ooh-ing and ahh-ing and slowly persuading me to just consider one more. Just one more.

So we all know where this went. Philippa was born after an almost three year gap, a long space for me considering Theo and Sera are 15.5 months apart. When Pippa was about a year old, Nick and I decided that we wanted another baby, and we wanted to have it close in age to Pippa, like we did with Theo and Sera. We kept things a little longer this time, with 2 years and a few months between Pippa and Viv. Immediately after Viv was born, we knew we wanted one more baby, and since we didn't want to have one child a handful of years behind the rest, we decided to just go for it. So there will be a little bit more than 16 months between Viv and Baby5.

Honestly, I think I'm crazy. Nick too. I was going to stop after two kids. I would have happily been done. And while I was pregnant with my third and fourth children, I was so done. They were going to be my last. And after each of them, we needed another. And that has led us here, a chaotic family of six, with kids ages 7, 5, 3, 11 months, and one on the way. We are loud, we do not fit into a normal car, and we spend an obscene amount of money buying groceries. Old ladies love us, and middle-aged women raise their eyebrows at our circus, surely wondering if we have heard of birth control. (We have.)

As we've told a few people we've gotten a few of the shocked and-not-in-a-good-way reactions. Like this baby was an accident so we are just going to trudge through it. No. This baby was planned, and even if he or she wasn't, we would (and are going to) appreciate every single moment of this pregnancy and new adventure into parenthood.