Baby Bucket List

During a late night of hanging out with friends in my dorm room during my freshman year of college, we started talking about all the things we wanted to make sure we did before the four "best years of our lives" came and went. I scribbled a dozen or so ideas on a piece of notebook paper and taped it to the wall by my desk. I wouldn't learn the term "bucket list" for another decade when the movie by the same name came out, but that is essentially what my friends and I had composed for ourselves.

All I know for sure that was on the list was "hike Mt. Katahdin," but "camp on the beach and watch the sunrise" and "spend the night in a tent in the camping section at L.L. Bean" might have been on there as well. I decided that experiencing the latter was more of Bowdoin lore and highly-overrated, so I never did spend a night in the 24-hour flagship store in Freeport. But I still had that piece of paper four years later when I noticed there was a remaining spot on a "fall colors" camping trip to Baxter State Park and Mt. Katahdin offered by the Outing Club. I signed up even though I wouldn't know anyone on the trip, because it was my last fall in Maine and at what other time in the near future would I be able to do the hike? As for camping on the beach, I actually did that twice by sneaking into Popham Beach State Park with friends. (See, sometimes I can be a risk-taker.)

Some of my other favorite memories from college didn't make the list, only because I couldn't have predicted them, like all the trips to the Outing Club's cabin on the Appalachian Trail, exploring "God's country" (aka, being lost) on a trip to Montreal before the days of Mapquest and GPS, and a full-moon hike in winter that ended with us dipping our snowshoes in the Atlantic Ocean.

That was the first and last time I've ever actually made a list of things I wanted to do in life and then I heard the term "baby bucket list." Some people use the term to talk about the things they want to accomplish from the time they "pee on the stick" until the baby is born, but frankly, in my opinion, that's just a to-do list. Maybe you'll take a "babymoon" with your partner, but the rest of your time is spent vomiting, gaining weight, peeing every half an hour and somehow managing the energy to ready your living quarters for the arrival of a baby.

I think the term is more appropriate when referring to what people want to do/accomplish before they have kids. Probably few actually write a list down, but I think most people have a mental "baby bucket list," even if they never thought about their list in that way. I know there are a lot of things I knew I wanted to do before I had kids, and thankfully, I had that opportunity. I went to college and grad school, studied abroad, traveled, made awesome friends, started a career, lived in different places, had my own apartment, tried new things, like learning to cross-country ski and taking up running, rediscovered old passions, like playing soccer, founded a rec soccer team, got married and bought a house. Sure, I didn't do everything I had wanted to, but I have no regrets about what I did with my 20s. When the time came, having kids was a deliberate decision and just the next step of what I wanted in life.

Even when planned, kids change your life in ways and magnitude you can never prepare yourself for. So when I heard the term "baby bucket list," I actually thought it referred to the list of things you still want to do, even though raising young kids requires you to juggle different financial, familial and time commitments that will affect how and when you achieve your life's goals and even what those goals may be. But I think it's important for parents to have bucket lists, even if looks different than what it was pre-kids and even if fulfilling it becomes more unpredictable.

I've been so consumed with child-rearing and growing another baby that I hadn't given much thought to what I would like to do/have/experience someday, because well, someday seems very, very far away right now. But when I thought about it, I was able to come up with a list pretty quickly.

So the baby bucket list, in no particular order, goes....I'd like to take a trip when my kids are old enough to help plan where they want to go. I want to take a trip with my husband sans kids. I want to travel with friends. I want to go back to Europe and visit old friends. I want to return, more or less, to my pre-pregnancy weight. I want to regularly go to sleep past 9:00 p.m. and sleep in past 7:00 a.m. I want to not feel exhausted all the time. I want to host more dinner parties. I want to cook and bake again from scratch. I want to keep reconnecting with old friends and maintaining friendships. I never want to stop making friends. I never want to wear maternity clothes or a nursing bras again. I want a tummy tuck. I want to speak German fluently again. I want to decorate and furnish my house without kids in mind. Heck, I want to decorate, period. I want to learn how to be more organized. I want to live with less clutter and fewer material things. I want to visit more national parks. I want to stay home with my kids. I want to work in a fulfilling job. I want to keep writing. I want to live an active lifestyle. I want to have regular family dinners...

And I could go on and on. Clearly I've just gotten myself started.