I Never Thought I’d Become THAT Mom :: Minivan Driving Mama

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If you had asked me in my early twenties whether or not I would have children, my answer would have been, “I have no idea.” I certainly wasn’t opposed to the idea, but having children was never on my “have-to-do” list in life.

But fate has a way of knowing what you need even if you don’t, and so, here I am, living in the suburbs, with three small children and one on the way … and I’m driving a minivan.

Yep, a minivan. The quintessential symbol of mommyhood.

minivan
Nothing screams motherhood quite like the minivan!

I resisted this label for a long time. Like I said, having children was not on my bucket list. Finishing college; check. Getting my master’s degree; check. Having a career (not just a job); check. Owning my own home; check. Buying a brand new car; check.

And then I met my husband. He was different than the guys I’d previously dated. He was (and still is) very driven to be successful. He also had checked all of those items off of his bucket list, and so it seemed like a natural progression to move in together, get married and start a family.

So that’s what we did. He moved into my little house in Earlewood, and we married on a lovely Saturday morning in August.

We thought we would be married for a year or so before trying for children, allowing us time to adjust to married life. But a motorcycle accident involving my then fiancee made us realize that life is precious and we decided to start our family right away.

As a result, I traded in my adorable bright blue VW bug for a Jeep Patriot. I was not ready to make the move to a mommy minivan, and an SUV is a great small family car.

When we added to our family again 16 months later, we added another carseat to the back of the SUV. When my husband drove the kids to daycare in the mornings, they were both in the back of his Ford Mustang.

And then the inevitable happened. We discovered that we were expecting again, and we decided to face facts; it was time. It wasn’t practical for our soon-to-be family of five to have a sports car, so my husband traded in his Mustang for a Ford Freestar. We chose this older model because we wanted amenities in our vehicle that we would not have been able to afford in a new minivan.

We affectionately call this van our “starter van.” After all, we have had a lot of firsts for our family in a very short amount of time. The van fits our family well, and soon we will be adding another carseat to it. I’ve embraced my role as mom, in fact it’s the role that I was born to play. And if the minivan is the symbol of this role, then so be it. I’ve earned it.

Are you a minivan driving mama? What made you decide to take the plunge?

 

Photo credit: drewesque / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

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