Slipping One Past The Goalie

Jeff and I decided to start the new year off with a bang.

We're having a baby.

Yeah. Another one.

Because I come from a big family, I'd always known I wanted more than two kids. Back then it seemed to me that two kids was almost too...calm. Not enough chaos for my taste. Of course, this was also back before I actually had any kids of my own. Back when I was part of the chaos, and not the one trying to control it. Two kids means you only have one other person to play with. Only one other closet to raid. Only one other person on whom to inflict bruises, to tease, to argue with, giggle with, watch Star Wars and Jaws with, complain to, commiserate with, hold back the hair of as your sibling drunkenly retches into your parents' flower beds. Yessiree....the more people you have to hold back your hair while you puke up your two-for-one rum and Cokes, the happier, more well-adjusted adult you will be. I am living proof of that.

So now we're going to have three kids. Half the chaos of my childhood. I don't think I know what I've gotten myself into. We've all heard about how two kids are harder than one, but three kids are easier than two. I kinda don't see how in the hell that is possible. It seems like adding children to your family causes exponential increases in noise, toys, laundry, grocery bills, therapists, and the amount of alcohol you consume. Three kids in a family increases all these things nine-fold. Which means that if my parents had been the drinking kind, they would've needed their own still in the backyard to compensate for whatever nonsense the lot of us brought on. This explains why my father holed himself up in the garage-converted bedroom in the darkest, coldest corner of the house for hours, huddled before his cobbled together NCR computer, oblivious to the rest of the house unless one of us hit a wrong note on our respective band instrument (I can still here my father's shouts of "b-Flat, b-Flat!" wafting through the heating vents from his man cave below), and my mother holed herself up in her bedroom in front of the TV precisely at 6 pm, refusing to come out even if one of us kids was simultaneously puking and bleeding out onto the linoleum (if it were onto her Oriental rug, that was a different story).

Anyhoo, having already been through two pregnancies makes me feel like something of a seasoned mom. None of this is new, none of it is earth-shattering or ground-breaking. I've already said goodbye to beer, privacy and my belly-button long ago. I received a tote bag from my OB's office stuffed with magazines, a pregnancy planner and a plethora of lists and pamphlets all about what to expect and how to prepare for the upcoming bundle of joy. Instead of poring over the literature and turning into a sobbing mess because my ill-eqipped little self had SO MUCH TO DO in the next eight months like I did the first time around, I let my kids ransack the bag and turn the magazines into glossy confetti. I recycled the planner and am now using the tote bag as a storage bin for Elsa's baby doll accessories (of which she now has about eighty thousand. Seriously, between her birthday and Christmas, her bedroom now looks like a maternity ward, a bunch of plastic, bald babies strewn around in various stages of undress, replete with magic bottles, rattles, bath toys, personal trainers and spiritual advisers--the last two were really hard to fit into a pink tote bag from OBGYN and Associates).

All the reading material regarding pregnancy I've come across is understandably for first-timers. For the moms who wonder if they need to give up their monthly Big Mac, if they should invest in wipe-warmers, if their bodies will ever be the same again (the answer to all these is a resounding No. Although I have to admit, what I have lost in terms of my figure I have gained in boundless knowledge of ear infections, Hot Wheels paraphernalia and the program line-up of Nick Jr).

This time around, my biggest concern is how to field the questions I'm sure Rollie will start asking when he realizes that the huge lump under my shirt is an actual baby that will eventually have to make an appearance. I can already imagine the blogs that are forthcoming. The last discussion we had on the subject, Rollie concluded that he must have dug his way from my womb...kinda like an armadillo. I haven't bothered correcting him yet. Guess Jeff and I have some 'splainin' to do....

Oh yeah, and I have begun work on my next book...Pregnancy Is Easy...Unless You're The One Who's Pregnant. Stay tuned, dear readers.