Place Your Bets

The common reaction to my growing gut is, "Congratulations! You're going for the girl!" It has been funny how often some variation of that comes out of someones mouth. I smile and tell them I'm sure it's a boy, then we talk about how fun boys are ...

Two things have been sticking with me this week. The first is that I recently heard a story of a friend of a friend who is pregnant with her second child (her first is a girl) and she recently found out she was having a boy. She went home and cried because she didn't know what to do with a boy. When I thought about it I got really sad for her. Yes, having a boy or boys is different than having girls (so I'm told). But as I'm sure she will come to learn on her own, boys are SUPER fun! There aren't tea parties or many quiet, still moments. But there are explorations and stomping in anything wet with or without rain boots -- full speed ahead trying of just about anything new -- little hands forcefully tugging you out of the house as soon as the sun is up. Sure, I'd like a tea party every now and then ... so I go to tea with my girlfriends. And when our kids are older, there will be Auntie M days when I kidnap the daughters that are sick of their own mothers (and vise-versa) and we'll do super-duper girlie stuff. But I wouldn't trade what I have for a second. It made me sad that this friend of a friend felt like her life would be somewhat less to have a boy. Which leads me to my second thought ...

Many late nights with my roommate in college we did what girls do -- plan out our lives. Funny how not much has actually happened as we said it would ... but she does live down the street and we do BBQ often! Anyway, she would tell me that she wanted five boys ... "A Suburban full of hockey players" is how she saw her future. I had no idea what I wanted, but she was so convinced and convincing, it was hard to understand why one would choose to have anything different if the choice was ours to make. Not a chance in hell there will be five ... but now that I've got 2 on the front line, I get it. There's also some magic about watching brothers, be brothers. There have been some pure and awesome moments between the boys lately that we haven't seen before ... and they rock my world in the very best way.

So, if #3 cooperates, we will find out today if we're destined for 5AM ice time ... or if there will be another high-pitched squeaky voice among us. Place your bets now. My bet is with the Suburban.