Blog

I have officially reached that time in my life that I’ve secretly dreaded, just a twinge, for the past three years. That time in your early-to-mid 20’s where the immature pest, the prankster, the wild child, the studious geek, the dumb giggly flirt, the perfect princess, the clown, the sweetheart-to-everyone, the jerk, the extremely strange oddball, and the nice group of kids you hung out with all unite under one title – “adult.” The stereotypes fall away and all those people you knew throughout grade school, high school, and college are now grown ups. They graduate, move out, purchase real homes, buy appliances, adopt pets, get amazing internships, find good jobs, learn about financial responsibilities and savings accounts, travel the world, get engaged, do really cool things with the talents they’ve developed, and get married. It’s a little strange to see all these changes and advancements since you swear that person was just sucking the helium out of the balloons at prom, noshing on mall Chinese food at 5 a.m., and wearing a T-Rex Halloween costume in July on a dare like 5 minutes ago. But, hey, benefit of the doubt, right? Most of us grow up a little bit by age 24, and we are ready for some of those life changes – in fact, it’s pretty fun! We’re still kids at heart, just with homes and jobs and relationships. Those kind of changes I can handle.

Then it starts to get iffy. First one surprise. Cool! Then another. How exciting! An announcement here – yay! – and there – okay, that’s super awesome but this is starting to get weird. The light bulb goes on and you start to wonder. Suddenly that little thing you’ve known was slyly creeping closer and closer to your age group arrives right now and in full swing with no backsies. It’s officially baby season.

Every. single. person. I. have. ever. known. is having a baby.

Please feel free to remove your mind from the land of excitement, dread or whatever you may be feeling right now. No, we’re not having a baby. That’s everyone else’s job right now. We love our family of two just the way it is and don’t plan on expanding it.

It makes sense though, doesn’t it? We’re moving into the mid-20s where careers are getting good, and we’re more settled. We’ve traveled and had fun, we have homes, jobs, and someone special we love. The timing is just right for a lot of people. That doesn’t make it any less weird that everyone I know is old enough to reproduce and is choosing to do so. I’ve been genuinely happy and excited every single pregnancy I’ve heard about so far – because if you are ready and you want kids – that’s really neat and such a great joy. I love seeing my friends so happy and most of the kids are completely adorable. Still doesn’t make it any less weird. Sorry.

The next thing that inevitably comes up is gender and name. Everyone’s comments on Facebook read: “Do you know what you’re having?” or “What name have you picked out?” The trend is to want to know the gender asap, find out the gender, announce the gender to everyone, then announce the name you’ve chosen. It’s almost astonishing these days to hear of a couple who doesn’t know the name or gender in advance, or who chose not to share the name or gender ahead of time if they do know. I understand perfectly the reasoning behind every one of these decisions because, I can only imagine, it is very helpful to know the gender ahead in terms of purchasing the things you’ll need. But to me it lacks a certain element of surprise. By the time the baby’s born you, and every stranger down the street, know the gender, weight, nursery theme, and calls the kid by his/her name already. So when the baby finally comes – great! But you already knew everything anyway. I kind of like the way things were 15 years ago when all you knew was that a baby was coming and that was that. You had two names in mind, usually kept them to yourselves, bought gender-neutral clothing and room stuff, and everything was a surprise until d-day.

But since we’re on the subject, let’s talk names. What a huge responsibility! The kid is stuck with whatever name you choose for life, and as we all know, names go in and out of style each decade. And what’s more is that everyone likes different names. I think most of today’s trendy names are pretty lame. But plenty of other people must like them because they’re obviously popular for a reason. Emma is the new Jessica or Ashley. Aiden is the new Michael or John. Take a look at the top baby names from the past few years – it’s pretty interesting. I’m not really sure where I was going with this, but it was food for thought. Anyone else in the same boat where a big milestone’s been reached within your age group?