The joke is that I have 2 ½ children. The first is Connor, a spirited little 2 and a half year old boy, second is Charlotte, or ‘Little Bit’, my sunny nine month old daughter, and the ½ is Genevieve, my ten year old step daughter.

 

I have been home with the kids since I had Connor, honestly I worked the day I went into labor with him, but quit the job while I was out on maternity leave. It honestly isn’t how I expected my life to go, but while I keep feeling shocked about the reality of the situation I also know I wouldn’t change it.

 

That reality really hit me hard recently though, and I finally did it… I broke down and bought a minivan. We traded in the bright yellow Dodge Caliber, lovingly known as either the Yellow Submarine or Bumblebee, for a dark blue Dodge Grand Caravan. I have now joined the ranks of the ‘Soccer Mom’.

 

After Little Bit was born I kept squishing my family into Bumblebee hoping we could make it work. We had only owned that car for a year and a half, she was reliable, got good gas mileage and best of all she was simply adorable. But I finally had to admit that it just wasn’t practical. Poor Genevieve was tucked in like a sardine between two car seats, there wasn’t much room for all the stuff three kids tend to acquire, and it turns out the kids only keep getting bigger. So I made the switch… but I did it my way…

 

We brought the car, correction: van, home and I decided she needed a good nickname just like her predecessor. I would not be content just driving a minivan like the rest of the mom’s out there, she needed a personality. It took some time, I started scouring the internet for some decals that I could slap onto the van and make it my own. I started looking into Star Trek, I’m a big Trekkie really and was hoping I could find something, I did find a few cute decals that would have made it a transport van for Star Fleet Academy, which was cute but not quite right. So I moved on to the other ‘Star’ Sega, Star Wars. I couldn’t find anything to make her a Millenium Falcon that wasn’t too huge or irritating, and she was the wrong color to be the Death Star (although if she had been black…). Zombies just didn’t quite work for me… I couldn’t find a Serenity sticker that really got the point across… I wasn’t quite ready to pander to my son enough to go for Transformers… I was getting frustrated. Can’t a girl find some good nerdy decals to put on her Soccer Mom Van!? And that’s when I saw it… a cute little Police Box showed up on my screen. Jackpot! 

 

All of a sudden I started searching for Doctor Who, and suddenly it became difficult to limit my selection. I mean what was better than me and my family cruising through the city in a time traveling space ship? A week later all the decals showed up and now I’ve got a whole slew of Doctor Who decals all over the car, everything from the ‘Police Call Box’ logo, to a ‘Bigger on the Inside’ saying, silhouettes of Cyber Men, Weeping Angles, Daleks and of course the Tardis herself. I now have my son going around asking for rides in the Tardis. J It is fantastic.

 

And of course things have kind of gotten a little out of control with it, which is easy as Doctor Who things have suddenly appeared en mass all over the stores (at least the stores I go to). I now have a Sonic Screwdriver on my key chain, a little talking Dalek on the diaper bag, a shirt that makes me look like a giant Tardis, and oddly enough a set of ice trays that make tiny Tardis’s and Daleks. 

 

Now I can have my minivan and all the space it provides, it truly is Bigger on the Inside, and I get to be a big geek and proudly show it off to the world. 

-Merideth.