It's a.......Gut Feeling

Friday is the big day. THE day. I can hardly believe it's here already.

It is time, at long last, to know the flavor of this little bean. I didn't give it much thought in the very beginning, probably because much more of my focus was centered on trying to keep the contents of my stomach in my stomach. I could've given a rat's patootie what the little belly-dweller's gender was, so long as it wasn't two of them and so long as I didn't become any sicker than I was with Ella.

But of course, I compared notes between my two pregnancies. I noted when the morning sickness started, when it peaked, when it ended, what I craved, what I had aversions to, etc etc. I also eventually succumbed to the gender quizzes on various baby sites and consulted the Chinese Gender chart on several occasions. Every woman who becomes pregnant is secretly (or maybe not-so-secretly) desperate to know whether she's carrying a girl or a boy. And it's usually the second question out of people's mouths too, right after they notice your protruding bump.

"When's the baby due?" - The middle of February.
"Do you know what you're having?"- _________?

A word of warning: Especially nosy people may proceed to ask you, then, if this was a planned pregnancy, if you're planning to have anymore, what the name is, and some truly special people might indulge you with the story of their child's birth or how they knew so-and-so who crapped on the table when they were pushing the baby out. No, I'm not kidding. That happens (the crapping part AND the fact that someone I had known for 40 seconds was willing to share that tidbit with me). I felt special.

Anyway, when I was pregnant with Ella, I wasn't technically supposed to know that I was pregnant with a girl, but in an unfortunate turn of events (that proved to be fortunate for me), it was revealed to me during one of my appointments when Jake wasn't there. He insisted on being kept in the dark for the next 5 months, and so I kept it from him, trying to preserve the surprise he so desperately wanted on delivery day. And I must have done a good job masking it, because he and several of his family members swore up and down that we were going to be meeting Milo Ryan that day, not Ella Claire. It was a truly beautiful- yet almost comic- moment when they pulled her out and said, "okay Dad, take a look- what do you see?"

A girl?!?!

I had the last laugh on that one. ;)

This time, I pretty much insisted we find out as soon as humanly possible. There would be no more secret shopping and hiding clothes, no slip-ups to give anything away. No waiting until Christmas morning to open the shiny package. (It wouldn't come as a shock to anyone that I was the child that would crawl up under the Christmas tree to more thoroughly examine and shake the packages with my name on them. I'm pretty sure I was caught doing it last year too). So yes, we are going to "ruin" the surprise (as some people *cough-JAKE-cough-cough*say) and go right for the crotch on Friday.

But, even with the mounting excitement, I feel that I could already tell you what we're having and that I'm 95% sure about it. And of course, I could be wrong. But I don't think I am this time. I've been surprised at how many of our friends feel very strongly that we're gonna be buying blue this time around. I had a few friends call it right from the beginning. Jake also believes Ella will be getting a brother, but I'm not sure if it's because he just wants a boy so badly or because he actually has a feeling in his gut.

The feeling in my gut has been girl, almost since the beginning. I've had nothing but girl dreams, some of which even revealed girl names that we've considered. I've even had a few people tell me I must be having a girl. And on that note, I've learned that you should never, ever ask them why, or else you could end up hearing them reference some crazy old wives tales like the unevenness of your breasts, or the fine hairs on your upper lip or how your right butt cheek sags more than your left, so therefore, it must be a girl. I just don't ask anymore.

I haven't really checked out all of the crazy old wives tales this time around. To be honest, if I were going by some of the more well-known (and slightly less insane) tales, I'd actually have every reason to think this is a boy as well. Which is why it's all the more intriguing to me that the closer we get to the big reveal, the more I feel like we're going to have two little princesses on our hands. I would love to be proved wrong, but then again, I always like to hear the words, "you were right." ;)

My next favorite words to hear: "Let's go shopping." And no doubt, there will be plenty of that in the coming weeks. ;-)

A Work of Art

My parents have this picture I made for them when I was about ten years old. It's a picture of Santa Claus and a Christmas tree with toys under it. And, just to show that I was versatile in various mediums, I went all out and used puff paint for this particular masterpiece. Yep, I was cool. Anyway, every year at Christmas time, they pull this picture out and put it up on their refrigerator. They even had it laminated for good measure, making it next to impossible to tear or cut up, as I had tried to do so many times years later. Now, it's become sort of a standing joke, that when I come to visit and go to open the refrigerator, I am stopped dead in my tracks by the deformed looking Santa (and is that his sack on his back or is he somehow related to Quasi Moto?) I always roll my eyes and make a crack about taking the picture somewhere very far away and putting it out of it's misery, to which my mom exclaims, " NOOooo- you leave that picture right where it is! Someday you'll have children and they'll make pictures for you and you'll think they're the most beautiful things in the world and you'll want to keep them too."

Now, let me be brutally honest: I've worked in several nurseries and done my fair share of babysitting enough to know that most of the pictures I've seen kids draw have been, well, the word ugly springs to mind. Some have even been downright insulting. A few years ago, I was in church and a little girl I used to babysit walked up at the end of the service and told me she had drawn a picture of me for me to have as a gift. And there I was: a long torso, midget legs, and fins for arms. I had a few strands of hair that were styled into a mullet and my forehead showed indications of a thalidomide birth defect. Yeah, real nice, kid. I'm glad to know that's what you think I look like. Somehow, I was able to mask my look of horror, forced a "thank you," and managed to take it all the way home with me, where Jake and I had a good laugh over it and it was then promptly placed in the trash can.

Instances like that, plus my disdain toward my mom's sentimentality over the Santa Claus/Hunchback picture fueled my belief that I would probably poke fun at my own kid's artwork someday too, (but not to their face, obviously). Ah, but parenthood seems to have a way of making us eat our words or pre-conceived notions. Ella picked up some crayons yesterday, so I got a piece of paper and taped it to the table and let her go to town. I was a little leary of leaving her with a box of crayons at her disposal, as only 2 months ago, I had tried to show her how to hold a crayon and scribble and she had instead found them more enticing to eat rather than to draw with. This time, however, she had figured out how to hold the crayons and had seemingly forgotten that they had ever tasted good. I watched her look of concentration as she figured out exactly the right angle to hold the crayon and saw how her eyes lit up as she began to make marks on the page. A few minutes later, I walked back over to find that she had even used several different colors and there were scribbles, zig-zags and curvy lines scrawled all across the paper- her first official piece of artwork. I almost had to stop myself from tearing up, but I suspect the pregnancy hormones were mostly to blame for that. Either way, it was beautiful and it was a part of her. And in that moment, I understood why my fugly Santa picture still adorns my parents refrigerator at Christmastime. Probably for the same reason that my mom has kept my baby dolls and barbies. They are reminders of her little girl as well.

So, I now resign myself to having my refrigerator and walls overtaken by my daughter's creative musings. The house is already covered in Fisher Price and Leap Frog toys, so why not go all out, right? Another milestone is reached and I am both the proud and sentimental Mama I swore I would never be. But I'm totally okay with that. :-)