From the time I was a little girl, I always said I wanted four kids: two boys and two girls.  What can I say?  I like even numbers.  I even always said I wanted identical twins, and half jokingly told my mom while I was in college to pray that someday I would have twins but to not tell my future husband that she prayed that!  Ha!  As cool as I though that would be, I certainly never imagined it would really happen.  Most people would probably be all for being two and through if the first pregnancy was twins, but Mr. Blue has caught the four-baby bug, too.  We know that we definitely want another child and we’re both open to a fourth if it feels right after the third. Plus, I want to grow up and be Mrs. Train, complete with all her theme-week awesomeness, so I’m hoping having twins and four kids total will help me channel her!  I kid, I kid . . . sort of. 

Like most parents who know they want more than one child, we’ve spent a fair amount of time discussing sibling spacing.  When we found out that our first and second child were going to be . . . um . . .rather close in age (only 1 minute apart, in fact), that made us think very, very carefully about when to consider TTC again.  We love our boys so much and think they are the most fun dudes on the planet, but we’re just not up for 3 kids under 2.  Both of my brothers have daughters 18 months apart, so I’ve seen it done and done well, but we’re not tough enough for that!

So, when do we think we would like to start thinking about bambino #3?  We’re in firm agreement that we will not TTC until the boys are a minimum of 2-years old.  It might be longer than that, but that is our official “It’s okay to start discussing it” date.  This ensures that the Baby Dudes would be almost three, minimum, before we added another to the mix.  As for a hypothetical #4, we will most likely adopt if we go for #4, so spacing and timing won’t really be up to us.  We would like all of our kids to be within 2-3 years of their siblings, but we also know there’s really no way to guarantee this whether through biological or adoptive processes.

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There’s a million factors that go into ideal child spacing and number.  We both came from families of three.  We agree that this number often leaves one kiddo left out, but two just isn’t enough for us.  We hope that by having an even number and 4 kids, there’s a better chance that everyone will always have a playmate.  Wishful thinking perhaps, but its worth a shot.  We also both think big families are generally a lot of fun (and a lot of work, too).  Yes, there can be a lot of chaos, but we love the idea of having a houseful of kiddos.  We’re totally the couple that fantasize about how fun it will be someday when they’re grown and everyone descends on our house for the holidays–just a mini-Brady Bunch!  At the same time, having two babies is exhausting, and there are times I tell Mr. Blue that I just don’t think I can do this all over again.  I think most parents feel that way now and then when their kids are still little and not sleeping consistently through the night, but even during this time, more often than not, I really want more kids eventually.

As for spacing between kids, we know there’s no guarantees, but we would really like them to be 2 1/2-3 1/2 years apart.  Growing up, I was a lot closer to my brother who just under 3 years older than me, while my brother that was 5 1/2 years older and I were always at ages that didn’t mesh well together.  Mr. Blue is roughly a decade older than his sisters, so he really wants our kids to be close so they have the same shared memories and experiences.  We want to give our kids the best possible chance of growing up friends (or best frienemies depending on the phase!), and we hope a 2 1/2-3 1/2 year gap will foster a tight relationship. At the same time, this gives us a chance to hope the boys will be potty trained by the time #3 arrives, and it gives us lots and lots of time to enjoy the Baby Dudes before we add another to the mix.

I’d prefer to have any biological children before I’m 35, partially because of the risk increase and partially because I suspect the older you get pregnancy and parenting just become more physically taxing.  The last factor in our considerations is that we really want our kiddos to be closer in age, and therefore, in college before we’re “too old” to enjoy the refound freedom of being empty-nesters.  We didn’t start dating until I was 29, got married 15 months after that, and got pregnant 9 months after our wedding, and had the boys when I was 31.  As much as we love our kids and are looking forward to raising them, traveling with them, going to games and recitals, etc., we also think it sounds nice to still be in our 50s when we get the last kiddo out of the house.

At the end of the day, if and when we have Baby #3 and hypothetical Baby #4 will be perfect and we’ll make it work, but we can dream until then that everything will follow our perfect little plans!

In a perfect world, how many children do you want and how far apart in age would you like them to be?