The Day the Girls Found Out

We told the girls about their impending sibling on Saturday, December 14th.  We’d been waiting to make sure everything looked okay (we saw the baby’s heartbeat on the 5th, so we are hopeful!), and also because we didn’t know how long our precious heathens could keep a secret (we didn’t plan to tell our parents until closer to Christmas).

But both of the girls had stumbled upon me throwing up on several occasions (Allison said, “Mommy, are you okay!?  I hope you feel better.”  Nicole said, “Mommy?  Why you keep doing that?” in a disgusted voice), so we felt like we better fess up sooner rather than later.

The night before we told them, I wrote Allison a note:

Chris drew a picture for Nicole which featured our family of four plus a baby:

The Crazies.  Also, ignore the misspelling of Coco.

We folded both of the notes and placed them in envelopes with the girls’ names on them.  The next morning, I told the girls that we had a little surprise for them, sort of like an early Christmas present.

“We get to open it?” asked Coco.  I told them we would once Daddy was awake.  Weirdly, Daddy awoke not long after.  I think it might have been the combined efforts of Nicole sitting on his face, Allison pulling on his leg, and them both yelling, “Get up, Daddy!” at approximately 10 decibels.

Once we were all downstairs, I had the girls sit in front of the Christmas tree.  I filmed as Chris handed the girls the envelopes.  Nicole opened hers, tossed the note on the floor, and said, “That not a present,” in a very disgruntled sort of way.

Allison read hers aloud and though she didn’t jump up and down and scream like I had predicted, she did have a huge smile on her face.  We explained about the baby to Coco, who immediately said, “I want a boy baby!”

Allison, Chris and I cast our votes right after her [girl, boy, girl].  We started talking about what we would call the baby.  Allison suggested “Lyla” if it’s a girl, and Nicole’s first suggestion was “Candy Cane”.  Shortly after, she changed her mind in favor of “Tootsie Pop” as a first name and “Hello Kitty” as a middle name. 

Allison told Nicole that the baby was in my tummy, but Nicole wasn’t buying it.  “No.  Probably Daddy’s tummy,” she said, shaking her head.

Then Allison asked how the baby had gotten in my tummy, and I quickly asked if they wanted to see a picture of their baby sibling.

I showed them the ultra-sound images the doctor had given me.  I pointed out the head and the arm nubs and the body, but Nicole was still quite skeptical.  “That not look like a baby,” she said.

Later, after the girls had been ‘helping’ Chris rake leaves, Allison ran inside.  “I can’t believe we are going to have a baby!” she said excitedly.

Little Lyla Tootsie Pop Hello Kitty Claussen is going to have the best big sisters ever.

Oi! Intriguing!

Back in November I took a pregnancy test.  It was a Friday, and too early to have anything to worry about, but I took one because I wanted to lay to rest this building but irrational thought that I was pregnant.  I’d had some pretty impressive heartburn on Halloween, which is something my non-pregnant self never experiences.  Also, I kept falling asleep by 9:00 pm.

It wasn’t even the type of sleepy that begins around 7:00 pm after an exhausting day and slowly culminates.  It was more the kind where Chris would ask, “Hey, do you want to watch a movie?
“Sure, that sounds good.” [Roll opening credits]
“Zzzzzzzzzz”

And laying my irrational thoughts to rest with an early pregnancy test totally worked.  Until that second faint line appeared.

I stared blankly at it for a good 30 seconds, but it didn’t go away.  I blinked a couple of times.  The lines were still there.  I shook the test gently.  Still two.  Then, having exhausted all of my voodoo skills, I said a few things under my breath that did not become a mommy-to-be.

Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t upset at the thought of a new baby.  In fact, Chris and I had pretty much convinced ourselves we wanted a third.  We had just thought we’d wait a year before trying.  Only two weeks earlier Chris had mentioned that he definitely didn't want a baby until he finished his masters program.  Even so, I was cautiously ecstatic.  I wondered how Chris would take it.

I waited out the hours before Chris got home from work with extreme impatience.  I know some moms-to-be think up cute or clever ways to tell their significant others about an impending bundle of joy, but I have never been one of them.  Historically, I’ve just blurted out the news before Chris had a chance to take his coat off, and it didn’t seem like now was a good time to change.

So the moment Chris walked in the door, I said something like, “Hi, honey, how was your day?  We need to talk,” in one big breath.

Those four little words, “We need to talk,” can strike fear into the bravest of men.  “What?” Chris said, “What’s going on?”

Suddenly I decided to play it coy.  Or maybe I’d just been rendered speechless.  I pulled up a picture of the test on my iPhone 4, which took quite a while because the 4 is archaic.

When the picture finally appeared, I handed the phone to Chris.  He glanced at it and said, “Ooohhhh.”

It wasn’t an “Ewwwww,” as in, “Why would you show me a picture of a stick that you peed on?”

And it wasn’t an “Ooooohh,” as in, “I think I’m going to throw up.”

It was just, “Ooohhh,” as in “Oi!  Intriguing!”

I stared at Chris for a moment, and he looked back at me.  I spoke slowly in case he was in shock: “Do you know what that means?”

“Yes, I know what that means.  Of course!”

“And….”

“And what?”

“Well, are you…happy?”

“Yeah, it will be good.  How often are those tests wrong?”

"Not often.  Should I take another test?"

"No, I don't think so.  Let's just wait and see."

"Umm, okay."
  
[The next day I bought a two pack of tests at Target.  Both times I watched the plus sign appear before my very eyes.  One test is not often wrong.  Three tests are almost never wrong.  If I weren't a mathematician, I'd leave off the 'almost'.]

Anyway, we spent a few more minutes talking about due dates/whose fault it was (July 18th/His), and we both agreed it was pretty exciting, timing be darned.  Then the heathens came into the kitchen and all of the usual chaos ensued until bedtime.

Upstairs, there was another brief round of, “Hey, you want to watch a movie?” [him] followed by, “Zzzz” [me].  And then I woke up at four in the morning able to think of nothing but this possible baby.

I thought about how Allison and Nicole would love having a baby in the house, and what room we could use for a nursery.  I thought about adding another hook in the girls’ bathroom for the new baby’s towel and how I would need to switch some pictures out of frames to include the newbie.  I wondered where we’d put guests once the guest room was a nursery and whether we’d need a bigger kitchen table.  I worried about my job and childcare and needing a mini-van and the alarming possibility that this baby could be a boy.  I pictured us holding a footie-pajama-ed bundle of cuddliness, family pictures of five, and Thanksgivings thirty years from now with a house full of people and our three beautiful children rolling their eyes and smiling about their neurotic mother.

I couldn’t go back to sleep, and I spent the following day thinking, “I can’t believe I’m pregnant,” forty gazillion times.

Chris woke up just before eight o’clock, stretched, and put on some work clothes.  “I’m going to go work on the neighbors' deck.”

Mars.  Venus.