The seven-year plan

On our trip back from Florida, my six-year-old was coloring in one of those activity coloring books (because we can't just have coloring books, they must have other activities) and came across something that said to write your wish so she asks my mother-in-law, who is sitting next to her, how you spell baby.  After she spells that out, she asks, "how do you spell sister?".  Ha.  She's got some time to wait.  Welcome to the seven-year-plan.

We bought a house in a great neighborhood next to an elementary school.  My daughter just started there this year.  We live within walking distance, which is nice, or will be in two years when my daughter no longer requires an adult to walk her there.  Yep, we discovered that children must be accompanied by an adult until second grade.  I was pretty frustrated until my daughter started school and I realized she is nowhere near responsible enough to walk the 100 yards or less to the school.  It has, however, proved to me that I don't want more kids until my two younger children are old enough to walk themselves to school.  This I have learned after waking my sons up from naps so we can walk about 100 yards to get my daughter at the end of the day.  I'm hoping I will have a mom-friend or a babysitter that can pick my daughter up next year.  But this dilemma of walking kids to and from school is where the seven-year-plan comes into play.

In seven years, my youngest will be in second grade, which is when he can walk himself to school.  Not that he'd be alone because at that point, his older brother would be in third grade and able to accompany him.  Sounds pretty good, right?  Well, besides that happiness, I will hopefully have been working full-time for at least two years at my new job, which had better not be retail. Let me tell you how that's happening.

I'm on pace to transfer to Uva in three semesters tops.  That equates to a year and a half from now so I'm thinking a target date of fall 2015.  Two years there and graduation with a degree in biostatistics.  I'd love an internship at the university to fit in there somewhere.  If not that, I could maybe find a teaching job at the school my husband works at (can you say "carpool"?).  In any case, two years might be enough to establish a good relationship with my employer and enough pay to justify going back to work for them after a baby is born.

The last factor in the seven-year-plan is my age.  Things start getting dicey in terms of creating and carrying a baby after the age of 35.  I'm not trying to be a jerk or judgmental, it's a scientific fact.  In seven years, I will still be short of 35 and my husband short of 40.  Biologically speaking, I'd still be within my birthing prime. 

All together, seven years seems like a good time, assuming we even want another baby at that point, which my husband currently doesn't.  In all fairness, our most recent addition is a perfect little angel who arrived in the most perfect delivery one could hope for so it's tempting to quit while we're ahead.  Judging from the last seven years of my life,  a lot can change in seven years...