Different

Oh yes, did I say?  Lucy is having a baby sister!  Guess what that means?  We already used the name we liked and are stymied on girls' names!  Will is pushing for Princess Leia Martin.  The only problem is that when he tells people this, they don't think he's kidding.

Sad

Let's not beat around the bush: much of parenting relies on creatively manipulating your child.  And most of childhood revolves around creatively manipulating your parents.  So.

The Muppet Show is king around our house right now.  I try to keep it to just two shows a day, but some days call for three or four (today is one of those days).  Often Kermit the Frog is my biggest assist in getting dinner on the table.  Occasionally, though, I have to sit down and watch it with Lucy, because holy cow, how do you boil pasta when Peter Sellers is reciting the soliloquy from Richard the Third whilst playing tuned chickens?

In other news, we find out TOMORROW whether Lucy is going to have a baby brother or baby sister!

Second

Thing about your second pregnancy is, your body already knows what's up.

I am at week 16 and fortunately out of the first trimester.  Three more weeks and we have our ultrasound to determine whether Lucy is having a baby brother or sister!

I should have another post up soon about Lucy.  Right now it's a word a day with her; her most recent one is "bottom" ("bompom"), and she enjoys rolling her giant stuffed sheep over and pointing to its bompom.

Chapter Two

It's a relief to have reached the end of my first trimester healthy and intact, because now I can finally share our biggest news.  At the end of March 2014, our eeny-weeny 6-pound-6-ouce snuffle-nosed baby is going to be a big sister.  Does she have a clue?  Well, she points to my tummy and says, "baby!  Hi baby."  Unfortunately she also does it to her tummy and Will's tummy.  So I'm going with a no.

"It's crazy," my friend Julia said when I told her our news, "to think that you're at the stage of life where you're not only expecting your second child, but you're like, okay with it."

It's true.  Where our first pregnancy entered our lives like a stealth-mode wrecking ball, we planned this one out to coincide with Will's job and were squinting at the horizon as soon as I stopped taking birth control.

Not with a bang, but with laundry.

We've been extremely fortunate to be able to conceive so easily ("Man," Will said, "we're good at this.") and have been blessed with a healthy first trimester.  And the best news for this blog?  I haven't puked at all!  So no puking comics!

For now.

Naps

Yeah

It's a twofer today!

Lucy's most frequent word now is "yeah," occasionally punctuated with "ohhh yeah."  It makes her a very agreeable child, although our conversations frequently get us nowhere.

You'd think it would be easy to stay out of trouble with such a congenial vocabulary, but it does sometimes get her into trouble, as when we visited Will's grandparents and went to church with them.

And Just Like That...

And suddenly, our baby is not a baby anymore.  She's an almost-walking, almost-talking, fully-weaned little girl.  She can feed herself and fall asleep on her own and signal when she's all done and call out "da da!" when Will comes home from work.  Infancy is over.

I'm a little sad.  Nursing for thirteen months, while inconvenient at times, was so very intimate and special.  No matter what else was happening, if she was sick or sleepy or cranky, or if we were stuck in a crowded space that was overwhelming her, we always had this little place to go to, just her and me.  Those first few weeks of snuffly single-mindedness gave way to bright eyes watching me and little hands pulling my hair while she nursed.  After she started solid food, it was still a sort of "home base" for us if things got too newfangled.  Even when we were down to just one nurse a day, at night before she went to bed, it settled her and I liked to think it made her feel safe and comfortable.  Part of me will always miss those sweet, simple moments.

But you'd better believe I am buying a new bra tomorrow.