And Baby Makes... Five?!!??!!

Dear Meatball,

Ready or not...! Oh, baby Meatball. My most precious Christmas gift. How special you must be for announcing your presence as you did, on the day you chose. Oh baby, sweet little baby. Whatever am I going to do with you???

Little Meatball, I've been selfish these past few weeks. I wasn't expecting you'd be here so soon - hadn't planned on it for several more months, in fact - and was hoping to shed a few more, say, a couple twenty pounds before we would even start trying for you. And since Christmas I've been at a loss. I have wished too many times that I could stay on Weight Watchers and lose just 10 more pounds. I've looked at my closet, full of clothes that have hung on their hangers for over 3 years and were just starting to fit again, wishing I could have had more time to enjoy them, just once more before my body swells to the size of the Hindenburg. But this will wait. It will have to wait for one more year - and I'm giving myself just a few months after you arrive - until I can start again, and try to be a much more active (and pretty) mommy for you than I've been thus far for your two older brothers. I am ready to start looking ahead to the path that we're on, not the path that I had planned.

Sweet little Meatball, do you know how lucky you are? You have the most wonderful older brothers who will welcome you. Your oldest brother Lars, who will be three years old when you arrive, loves to play and tease and tickle. He is silly and goofy and loves to love people. And he is such a good older brother to Kaj, who will be only 20 months older than you. Kaj is not yet walking, and we expect to be much more of a bruiser than Lars. Kaj loves to bounce and screech, two past-times I hope will be broadened when he begins walking. He is a rascal - a sweet and sassy rascal. So you're well-anchored by two brothers who will love and chase you. Oh little baby, how lucky you will be. How much you will love each other.

Oh little baby. What will you be? Part of me knows you're a boy, because you have two older brothers and some days I have this bizarre sense that God has an at-times cruel sense of humor and He's trying to keep me from any further joyous shopping expeditions. But unlike my friends, who all predicted with 100% accuracy what their children would be, I have thrice now not had any feeling one way or the other. So I have no inkling what you will be. So... you could also be a girl. You are a surprise in every sense. And although I've behaved, in my head, like I haven't welcomed this surprise, I do like surprises.

With love, your silly, already-swelling Mama.
XOXO