my pregnancy #2 bucket list

No, I'm not pregnant nor do we have any immediate, firm plans to get pregnant. I'm not even taking folic acid yet, for crying out loud.  But, despite all my "one and done" musings via Twitter, I have been thinking about a possible addition to our family quite a bit lately (as if to balance those only-child musings, I posted links to this article and this one over the past couple of days).  Elias turned three a couple of months ago now, so if we were going to have two kids roughly four years apart, as both Neal and I are from our respective brothers (give or take), we'd need to get pregnant within the next month or so.  Obviously, our kids are not going to be close together at this point.  In hindsight, I'm glad I had my first early enough (finding out I was pregnant on my 30th birthday) to choose and not feel rushed into getting pregnant again before I'm ready, but on the other hand, who knows if I'll be as lucky next time around.

At any rate, at this point, to be honest with you all, it makes more financial sense to wait until Elias is in kindergarten to be home with a baby again.  Depending on my work situation (my Etsy shops keep me busy but I continue to submit resumes to the rare job opening), I'd like to take another one to one-and-a-half years off (or working very, very part-time as I did during Eli's first year) but I'm not sure I can manage that goal and send Elias to any sort of paid daycare/preschool, as we have since he was about 19 months and will continue to do so for the next two years of preschool.  And what's another year, right?  And yet somehow I'm still torn between 4 and 5 years (or perhaps somewhere in between).  I'm not sure what sign I'm waiting for but I keep telling myself, well, let's see how the next few months pan out.

And on that note, I've made a list!  Along with thinking about having another kid comes thoughts of all the things I'd like to cross off that never-ending to-do list before chaos once again becomes the norm for three to four years.  Here's what I have so far:

1. find a primary care doc and have a good old-fashioned physical

2. lose a wee bit more weight

I'm about ten pounds lighter now than I was when I got pregnant with Elias, but part of my pregnancy/new baby PTSD revolves around my experience with my first OB/GYN who obsessed over my weight gain.  (I also went over a certain number I'd like to stay below this time.  And that's all I'm gonna say about that.)  I do think she went a little overboard and I bounced back to within about ten pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight pretty quickly.  So I'd like to lose another 15-20  10-15 pounds before getting pregnant again. I think of it as a running start.  But I'm also not going to put off family planning until I get to that magical number since I know that number may be a little elusive, especially considering it took me six months to lose 10 pounds.

3. hair

Grow it out so as to master the true "mom hair" eternal ponytail and/or find a style that's as low-maintenance as possible. (Does anyone know if this exists? If so, please leave instructions in the comments section. Thank you.)

4. get a pedicure

5. cut out coffee, splenda, limit artificial stuff like Fresca, etc.

We sort of arbitrarily went off coffee a month or so ago, only because we decided to let our Costco supply run out, but without a half-caf bridge we didn't do so well. And the thing is, there are a few reasons it would be nice to not be addicted to caffeine, but it's mainly a pregnancy thing for me.  Splenda, on the other hand, is mostly out of my diet.  I gave most of my Costco supply to my diabetic MIL, keeping just a handful of packets for myself.

6. have professional family photos taken

7. cats!

I go back and forth on this one.  I'd actually love to find them a new home but the chance of that happening is minimal and I won't take them to a shelter.  We'll jump off that bridge when we get there.  (They've been pretty mellow the last few days, can you tell?)

8. finish room makeovers and other house stuff

Eli's room and the office are mostly done, so we still need to do our room, both bathrooms, repaint the kitchen, relandscape the front and back yards, oh, and figure out where baby #2 will sleep.

9. go through all Eli's baby stuff (currently in the shed where a mama spider recently had seven billion baby spiders, so,  yeah, fun!)

10. go on vacation!

Yeah, okay, so we're getting ready for our third and final "vacation" of the summer in a week, and no offense to any family who might read this, but we'd also like to take a trip just the three of us.

11. buy a minivan (check!)

That's all I've got so far. There are a few other items that are more for when I'm actually pregnant, if we do go for #2, but these are the kinds of things I'm thinking about now, with baby #2 still a very abstract idea, as Elias once was, not so long ago.

So, readers, what is or was on your pregnancy #2 (or 3, or 4) bucket list?