Let the Worrying Begin!

So my husband and I are probably most likely gonna possibly start trying to have a baby sometime next year, and I have already begun kinda sorta maybe planning for it. Most women probably wait until they are actually pregnant, but I have already bought a handful of books, and have begun drafting a hefty 'to do before baby' list. The list includes replacing a few remaining old windows, stripping/repainting trim that probably contains lead, and--oh yeah--remodeling our upstairs bedroom, and maybe parts of our kitchen.

And then last night I found myself looking up school district maps. As much as I like Schenectady, I don't want to live in this part of it when I have a school-age child. I myself am a product of public school, and I have no problem with mixed races in the classroom--I prefer it--but I also don't want my kid going to a ghetto school with future gang members, and Schenectady has a gang problem, particularly in middle school. And it appears that magnet school attendance is now determined by lottery and no longer by test scores like it was in my day--so even if our kid is smart/advanced, that won't determine whether or not it gets into the better magnet schools in the area. It goes without saying that I would never want to send my kid to private school, even if I could afford it.

Then there's the worry about our parenting styles, and what type of parents/role models we will be. I worry about our bickering--my husband and I seem to bicker the most when we are doing a house project together. He says I am a dictator when it comes to projects--I have a vision and it's my vision or nothing, and he feels overruled. We're working on our backyard remodel at the moment, and last night he simply said the words 'marble chips' as a possibility for an overlooked section of our yard, and I was like, 'oh, HELL no.' His problem is that I won't even pretend to entertain his ideas, I just dismiss them out of hand. I know that I do this, but he always comes around to my vision, in the end, so no harm, no foul, right? Besides, I think we enjoy the bickering, to some degree. It never erupts into full-blown arguments, so I think we're ok. But having a baby will open up whole new vistas of potential bickering, and I worry that the added stress will take its toll on us, and make us bad parents.

I suppose all of my fears are normal. No one has a perfectly debt-free, stress-free life, picture-perfect and smiling, ready to receive Baby. My husband and I might bicker, and we're far from rich, but we love each other, and we communicate well, for the most part. And at least my kid will have what I didn't: a two-parent household filled with bickering, laughter, and love.

For my own sanity I'm going to have to table some of this worrying for now, and focus on house projects. When I'm fat with giant boobs and an alien growing inside me, that's when I'll start worrying about schools and parenting styles.