Wine and Large Families

Well, not much has changed in the past week. I'm 31 weeks now- only 9 or 10 at the most to go! It's officially fall in New Zealand now and the leaves are starting to change! Driving through Central Otago wine country last Sunday was incredibly beautiful- a bit like New England foliage only more rocky and mountainous- like Southern California, if you can imagine a combination of the two! If you know anything about Dan and I, you can imagine how hugely disappointing it was for us to pass up winery after winery without stopping at any of them. This baby better be worth the huge sacrifices we are making in field of wine snobbery! Ha! I did want Dan to stop at least at a few so he could at least do some tasting on his own. Gentleman that he is, he didn't accept the offer.

Our first "antenatal" class was this week. (Yes, they call it antenatal as opposed to prenatal in this country. It's quite British, remember.) Although we already knew most of the material covered in the first session (we read ALOT) it was nice to meet other couples who are experiencing the same things we are. We thought we'd be the youngest couple there, but to our surprise, we weren't! There were about 8 couples total and about 5 of them looked like they might be our age or younger. We like to see young couples starting families early because there are just so many long term benefits to getting a family underway sooner. Personally, I'd like to not be battling teenagers anymore when I'm hitting retirement age, for one thing. (However, if Dan and I are planning on a large family, that might be unavoidable anyway. Who knows? I might just end up having our youngest when I'm into my 40's, which equals a teen in the mid 50's or beyond...) Whatever. In any case, we are happy to be having Baby #1 on the young side. One of our main tenets as a couple is that children are an investment. We could probably write a book about why we believe this, but suffice it to say, the returns are endless any way you look at it. Yes, in the short term, it might cost some, but you can't beat surrounding oneself with the love of a large family for the rest of your life.

On the subject of large families, we often remind each other of one observation: we've noticed with regularity that you'll often hear older couples musing that they wish they would have had one more child. One thing you never hear is someone saying they wish they had less. Food for thought I guess. :) More about Baby #1 to come soon!