You were married for a long time before you had kids. How did that decision impact your marriage?

Rachael: I’m really happy we spent almost nine years getting a chance to solidify our marriage before having kids. I was twenty-two when I got married, and prior to getting married, we were in a long distance relationship. We were also both in graduate school when we got married. I was doing my Masters in Urban Planning and Ainsley was pursuing his PhD. in Chemistry.  So I’m not sure we would have survived if we had kids in our first three years of marriage.

By the time we had our kids we knew each other so well and figured out how not to sweat the small stuff we don’t particularly love about each other — we probably have stronger coping mechanisms. Overall, waiting as long as we did has made us an amazing parenting team. So far we’re always on the same page when it comes to the kids and how we manage our home.

Ainsley: I think we have a stronger union today because of it. We had enough time to work on figuring out each other before having children. Because we had so much time to ourselves we traveled, stayed out late and did many of the things that would be much harder to do now that we have children. There are no real regrets because we basically have “been there and done that.”

What kind of challenges do you think you might be faced with in raising your children in the U.S. versus in Jamaica?

Rachael: We think holidays will probably be the hardest for our kids because the way we celebrate Christmas and Easter for instance is not necessarily the way most Americans celebrate those holidays. So my kids won’t be writing letters to Santa Claus, and they won’t be taking pictures with the Easter Bunny. We also don’t celebrate Thanksgiving — I can’t even cook a turkey and I have no interest in learning. So I’m sure they’ll resent us for this at some point, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

 Ainsley:  Not having many family members close by to provide a stable grounding in family is somewhat unknown territory for us. Fortunately over the years in this area we have a great supportive network of friends who are a lot like family.

[To continue reading click the page numbers below]