thinking about brats

I heard a conversation today in which a man was expecting his first grandchild. They were talking about how the first grandchild gets spoiled by the grandparents. This got me to thinking. I knew this kind of thing happened, but it has never happened to me. I was not the first grandchild. Far from it. In fact, my grandparents were probably sick of grandkids by the time I came along. Oh great, one of our kids is pregnant again. Whoopee.

So I figured that I would make my kids the first grandkids. Then I realized this is impossible. If I have kids with Craig, our kids will have been beaten by Jocelyn who is over 1 year old already. But that's what older brothers are for - you would expect them to have the first kid. I will probably have kids before my own older sibling, but still mine won't be the first. My stepbrother and stepsister both have kids that call my dad Grandpa. Mine would be the first blood-grandkids, but that is just being petty. In reality, all the good spoiling was done like 14 years ago, when I was too young to even have kids.

My mom is the only one that has no grandkids. She has started getting grandma fever though, which I think is an ingrained reaction to turning 50. But my mom was never much one for spoiling. Neither of my siblings nor I am spoiled in any way. However, grandkids change things. My mom might turn out to be a spoiler after all. I still have to beat out my sister and brother in the reproductive race for this to happen.

Another thing that passed through my brain was how many people, either known to me personally or not, that have lived out their lives in the following manner:
1. graduate high school
2. think about college
3. join the military
4. get married
5. pop out at least 2 kids (or have your wife pop them out, actually)
6. go off to war to die.

As far as I know, none of the people I know personally have completed step 6, but they will. War is fun like that. Even the military women I know of have done followed these steps. I guess they had to take more time off from killing people than their male counterparts, but the point is they reproduced - and quick!

What if I was an army wife? I'm almost 25, so I would probably be pregnant with my 3rd child by now. I would live on an army base, maybe even in another country, and sit around all day with my tract housing, cleaning up after the kids. I would spend even more time on the computer than I do now, and I'm sure that the evil habit of watching tv would resurface. Then I could spend some of the time socializing with the other army wives while my children played with the other army children. However my army children would not be spoiled, first born or not, as their grandparents would be thousands of miles away. That's definitely not the life for me.

So here's my life regarding kids:
No kids for a while. No spoiling. No dead husband (which is a good thing). No pitter patter of little feet. No 3am crying (the kids or me). No excess poop - the cat's is plenty. Blah.

Someday I will write a different blog that is quite the opposite sentiment.