The countdown.

Once CPT Dick returns from the field, we'll be heading stateside for Christmas. We are only flying back for a few days -- which, of course, will be so much fun with a toddler! -- but since he is due to deploy early next year, the family wants to see him. I don't blame them. But I have dubbed this sojourn the "guilt trip" since that is pretty much what is motivating it.

So yeah, I'm not looking forward to it. And it's not that I don't want to see his family (though his mother is crazy in a way that is totally annoying and usually directed at me). But really, it's that I don't want to be asked by every single individual family member when I'm going to have a little brother or sister for Munchkin.

You know how you start dating someone for a while and the family starts to ask when you are going to get engaged? And then you get engaged and they ask when the wedding will be? And then pretty much as soon as your new spouse smooshes cake in your face they start in about babies? The baby thing continues, apparently, ad nauseum, until you have 2-3.

(And I guess, after that, if you keep popping 'em out, after the fourth or fifth the family will ask when you plan to start using birth control).

I hate this question. One, I just think it's nobody's business. What if I couldn't have another? Doesn't that ever occur to anyone before they ask? But two, when was it decided that I'm failing my child if I don't pop him out a playmate? I just hate the assumption that if my reaction is not "we're working on it" -- maybe even emphasizing it by throwing my husband down on the floor right there and then -- that I'm somehow cheating my kid.

It's not like they don't know our situation and that I'm effectively a single parent. It's not like they don't know (and give me all sorts of useless advice) about Munchkin's speech issues. And it's not like they haven't heard us say, time and time again, that we're not ready and don't think we will be for some time. They keep asking, thinking that if they do, they'll get a different answer.

And when our answers become terse? They skip the questions altogether and just start saying crap to my kid like, "Just wait until you get a little sister, buddy! You won't be so spoiled then!" or "Tell your Mama that you need a little brother to play with!"

It's exhausting, really. I think this year, maybe I'll just start fucking back with them. When they ask when Munchkin gets a sibling, I'll just say that we're still working out the details with the Russian ex-crack whore who agreed to be our surrogate for $15,000 and a Volkswagon.