Someone at dinner tonight casually mentioned how fashionable it was right now to be pregnant. This in response to my observation that many of my friends are either pregnant (2) right now or have recently given birth (4). Six women doesn't seem like a lot, but the average is usually zero, so it's really a lot more than it may seem. And wow, does that make me itch. I was having drinks with a good girlfriend of mine tonight and we were talking about how we're just at that age (we're both 30) where people do this sort of thing and how much it almost feels like peer pressure to do it. But it's not really our peers -- it's our own little brains ticking away the time and telling us how we should do this thing called motherhood.

Girlfriend also expressed surprise that I'd feel the itch as intensely as her since I've already had a child - but I look back on that first year and half of Josh's life when he was completely mine and parts of it were rough, but my god, how I loved that little baby -- and maybe at this distance I romanticize it, but I know there was intense joy in that time of our lives together. Then some additional rough years where I felt distant and wasn't sure how to be a mother to a child I no longer lived with, but who obviously needed and wanted me. And now, I love him with such intensity and emotion -- something changed along the way -- I became more loving and he aged and became easier to relate to -- both of us meeting in this middle ground we could've only gotten to with time and maturity. But, yes, I want another child. When? Who knows. Maybe never? A possibility.

In lieu of the child, I've been seriously considering getting a dog. Almost just as good -- certainly just as much responsibility :)