Baby

[captain_slinky]

Baby first, or business first? If we have the Business first, I can give it a year or two and if it isn't working out I can dump it and go back to regular work, getting the insurance needed for my family. But if we have the kid first, well, The Law gets awfully mad at you if you just give up on one of those after just two years!

The scenario going through my head right now that makes the most sense goes in this order:

• Spend the next two years saving up money, spending time together, looking for a location, making connections.
  
• Open the Escape From Reality some time during the summer of 2007.
  
• By New Years Eve 2008 ( a year and a half later), we should know if this business is going to work or not.
  
  
  
  • If it *is* working, great! We get some insurance, get some employees and have a baby!
    
  • If it's *not* working, that's fine! At least I will have tried and won't have to live with this cloud of "what if" hanging over my head. I'll know that it just wasn't meant to be. I'll get a regular job with insurance again, and then we can have a baby!
    
  
  

The worst part of all my plans, however, is that they all involve Crystal staying at her job until she gets pregnant. Just so we can keep the insurance. But I know that she hates her job, and it really isn't fair for me to be doing something I actually *enjoy* while she toils away at a job she hates.

...Actually, that's not too much different from how things are now :) The only differences being that now I have a *steady* paycheck, Insurance, and bennefits.

I guess it all boils down to the fact that if the Business doesn't work, I can just quit. leave it. Be done. Go back to normal. But once we have a kid, that's it! We've got the kid! We're not allowed to just admit that it was a failure and get on with our lives... we're responsible for the next 18 years of this thing, and then we still have to do some maintinence on it all through it's LIFE! FOREVER!!!

Comments

[dotgirl.livejournal.com]

Why don't you guys come over for dinner this week, and you can talk small business stuff with Chris? My schedule shouldn't be too crazy - maybe Tuesday night, or something?

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sounds good... should be able to do it! Thanks!

[collisions.livejournal.com]

I guess it all boils down to the fact that if the Business doesn't work, I can just quit. leave it. Be done. Go back to normal. But once we have a kid, that's it! We've got the kid! We're not allowed to just admit that it was a failure and get on with our lives... we're responsible for the next 18 years of this thing, and then we still have to do some maintinence on it all through it's LIFE! FOREVER!!!

Dude, no matter *what* order you do anything in, that's still the case. If you have a kid, then start the business and it doesn't work, you don't have to lose the kid - just find a job! :P

Note what you just said: ...Actually, that's not too much different from how things are now :) The only differences being that now I have a *steady* paycheck, Insurance, and bennefits.

Just to play Wacky Go Nuts Guy, what's stopping y'all from trying for the baby *now*, then in a couple years going for the store? You'd have benefits from both your jobs during the pregnancy/birth, and during the pregnancy Crystal could try for the medical billing class, and then after her maternity leave she could decide whether to go back or just stay at home and do medical billing from there.

That may sound crazy - but what are the cons of such a plan?

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

The cons to having the baby right now are that (a) we don't want to have a baby in this tiny apartment (so moving would become a first priority), and (b) the unknown element of it all. The kid could end up being A LOT more work than your average kid. Television has pumped it in to me that "Having a kid changes everything".

Okay, the *big* con is that this is a very selfish 5-year plan. It's ful of al the stuff that *I* want to do, all before I "settle down" and have a kid. And having a kid, of course, scares the living bejeezus out of me (as it rightly should)! We may not be so lucky as to get a kid as perfect and adorable as Riley or Brittany, ya know? What of we get a "Special Neeeds" child? That's a life-long dedication there, sort of shutting down an plans you may have had and redirecting your priorities.

My selfish 5-year plan is ful of stuff I want to do *before* we take the reproductive gamble, so I won't have any regrets afterwards just in case things go down the difficult road.

Also, there's a strong chance that Crystal and I can't HAVE kids. We've ben doing "Pull & Pray" ONLY since we first got together... shouldn't the odds have caught up to us by now?