I got the best one, honey -- it's Nathan Junior. I think.

So I'm out with the kid for breakfast -- sometimes that's the only thing to do when you're rousted out of bed at the ass-crack of dawn on a Sunday morning, amirite? -- and the place is mostly empty except for some old couples (the male half of one of which was droning on about Obama in a very Fox-"News"-influenced way while the wife ignored him) and two other family groups. One of the fams had four boys under the age of four -- the middle two looked like twins -- and the other had five kids -- three girls, about 12, 11, and 9, and two boys, about 7 and 6.

Now. Here's the thing. Everybody was well-behaved, it wasn't that. It was just ... OMG. Four boys under four. I'm betting the last one was either unplanned or a "Surely -- SURELY -- this'n'll be a girl. What are the odds???" sort of thing. And the other fam -- those two preteen girls were all made up and extremely carefully outfitted, and you could just feel the waves of preteen self-consciousness radiating off of them. It squoze my heart just to look in their direction, especially knowing my kid will be right there in about 8-9 years.

And both fams reminded me of how, back in the long long ago, I thought I'd like to have five kids. My fantasy about this was heavily informed, if not lifted wholesale, from the family in A Ring of Endless Light. You know -- living by the sea in a converted stable, everyone loves everyone, there are dolphins and books and shit. (BTW, that's a great book, which I only realized is actually pretty Godbaggy on re-reading about five years ago -- God stuff and sex stuff generally just flew right past me when I was a kid, the former because I was immersed in it anyway so who noticed a bucketload more here or there, and the latter because I had No Idea What Anyone Was Talking About, Ever, for real).

So but -- five. Yeahhh ... I'm gonna have to give you a no on that one (even if I weren't old as fuck already, so it's too late and a moot point besides). Four's waaay too many for me. Three would be ... well, in other circumstances, like if I could stay at home, I might possibly consider it, but it would be a completely different world, requiring complex and fraught mental and emotional adjustments of a sort that I am not currently up for. I was only able to think of two without reaching for the Glenlivet in the last year or so. I love being a mom, and I'm looking forward to this next one in a pretty profound way -- but after that, I'm done -- and my god FOUR OR FIVE? Holy shit.

This post brought to you by the fact that I am lazy, selfish, and risk-averse. Huzzah!