Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Reverting back to a College Freshman

Grad school starts in less than a week, but does that mean I need to revert back to my college freshman days? Other people my age have kids and are doing adult activities, I on the other hand am reverting back to my 19 year old self...

Case in point. Last weekend we go to the Folk Festival. Am I excited about seeing the performers and hearing new music. Yeah, not so much. My first stop, the beer tent. I have a very low tolerance for alcohol. I really don't drink that often and I'm not a huge person, so any minor amount of alcohol will have an effect on me, especially if it is hard liquor. So, what does any normal girl do while she's drinking? That's right, smoke the cloves.

This very similar to my college freshman year. Every weekend was a beer fest and along with the beer fest came the cloves. Granted I'm not drinking nearly as much as I did in college, but what are other people my age doing? They are having kids. We are one of the few couples I know that don't have children.

So, the question that begs to be answered...am I reverting back to a 19 year old? Should I be growing up and doing the "grown up things?" And more importantly, can you still live my current drinking/smoking/traveling lifestyle and have kids. And if you can't, does having a baby somehow trump all of the other things that I so look forward to doing now? Answers....please!

1 comment:

gretchen said...

You mostly know my thoughts on this ;)

Honestly, though, yeah, you can't drink or smoke when pregnant (although european docs have different drinking standards for pregnancy, and it's not like all of Europe is dev delayed...), and in general, smoking is just bad for you (:)). Once a baby's born, even if you're nursing, drinking is okay. The rule of thumb on that is that if you're safe to drive, you're safe to nurse, and beer actually helps increase supply. I had a beer every night the summer I had Ingrid! :) Travel -- you can still travel. My parents took us all over the place, not internationally, mostly for financial reasons, but kids under 2 are free to fly, and if you were traveling to an urban area, pop the baby in a sling or backpack, take public transit, and you could live out of a backpack. I'm glad I did some traveling before having Ingrid, but I would give it all up to have her. The festival is a lot more fun with a kid than it was before.