2.3 Kids

I have two sons, aged five and one-and-a-half. My wife and I are now facing the inevitable question: do we go for one more? Once your last child approaches two, you start to think that the time is coming to hatch out another. We agreed from the start that we wanted at least two, but now that our biological imperative is slightly less urgent, we're finding the question of a third to be remarkably difficult.
"It's not a girl thing," says my wife, who wanted a daughter but was instead blessed with boys (and they are ALL boy). "I'm past the girl thing. I think it's a death thing."
That's what I love about my wife. She can say these things, and I know exactly what she means. When you decide that a part of your life is forever over, the specter of one's mortality looms large. And while we are not exactly old (mid-thirties), we are well past the age at which you are mostly looking forward with expectation. Young people believe that absolutely anything could happen in their lives; they still have the necessary hubris to believe that they will change the world. Middle age starts when you realize that your time is limited, and that if anything is going to change about your life you need to plan for it and make certain sacrifices.
So here we are, all settled down and reasonably happy, but still asking the same questions we asked at 25: how much is going to be enough? What will make me feel like I've down enough with my life? Two kids? Three kids? Two books? Three books?