Rent A Kid

A couple years ago, some friends of ours asked if they could borrow Samantha for a night or two so he could prove to his wife that she did not want another kid. Well, of course, we're always more than happy to pawn our kids off on other people help out a friend. The problem was, Samantha decided to be really well behaved for those two days, so the wife still thought she wanted a baby, and almost had our friend convinced.

After we had Samantha, David and I decided we're fairly convinced that we're done. No more kids for us. Well, I was only fairly convinced, David was completely convinced. Lately I've been feeling more and more settled. I'm done having kids.

Two Sundays ago, when a friend asked me if I'd watch her three-month-old baby boy, I started to get nervous. What if it's a sign that I'm not done? That I need to practice up? But I agreed to watch the boy anyway, because he's really a very cute baby.

So for the last two weeks we had a little tiny baby at our house. The kids absolutely loved it. Baby Micah came over a little after 7 a.m. every day, so when the kids woke up he was already here, usually sleeping. They would tiptoe into the living room, whispering to each other, "Baby Micah is sleeping. You have to be quiet!" (Or as Samantha would say, "Baby Bicah beeping!") They would sit there and watch him until he started to stir just a little bit, then they would get so excited: "He's waking up! Let's play with him!" And they would pat his cheeks and kiss his hair so that even if he hadn't actually been waking up, he wasn't sleeping any more. He didn't seem to care. He always had a smile (a cute, dimply-cheeked, toothless smile) for everyone.

Drew liked baby Micah so much that he came up to me in all seriousness and asked, "Mom, can we take Samantha back and keep baby Micah?" I had to try really hard to keep a straight face while I told him that Micah's mom would probably be very sad if we kept Micah, and that we couldn't even trade because Micah's mom already has a girl named Samantha.

Samantha loved to play with Micah, too, but has also been having fun taking care of her own "babies." Any doll or stuffed animal in the house is the baby. And they are all named Baby. Then Samantha will tell me, "I'm the mommy. You're the Grandma." She'd been playing this game for about a month now, but it's become much more frequent. Recently she's given herself more responsibility. She will pretend to dress her baby and change its diaper, and while she's doing it she'll tell me, pointing to herself, "This is mom's job. Mom's job. Okay?" And she'll look at me very sternly to make sure I understand.

I think David was wondering if I was going to try to convince him that we need to have another baby. I actually mentioned it, only partly in jest, to see what he would say. He said, "Are you serious?!?!" I assured him I wasn't totally serious, but wouldn't it be fun to have a cute little baby around? And the kids were having so much fun.

But after two weeks of having such a delightful baby at our house, I came to the conclusion that I am definitely finished reproducing and am ready to channel all my energies into raising the kids I have.

If this had been our friend, he would have considered it a successful rental.