Sharing News with the Kids

Sunday was Mothers' Day. I was going for easy. Ryan decided it would be fun for me to inflict some self-torture. The kids came in while I was still asleep, and they love to jump all over anyone who is down. So Ryan then comes in while they're in the bed with me, and he decides we should "tell them." By that he meant we should tell them I'm pregnant. I REALLY wanted to wait a while, like a couple more months, before we told them because I knew what was going to happen. These two are verbose little critters, and it's going to be unending baby talk from now till the baby arrives. I just wanted to spare myself some of it, but Ryan thought that since the kids think I'm a jungle gym, we needed to tell them so we could explain to them why they can't beat me up anymore.

So we told them, and I was right. Especially about Kylie. All she wants to talk about is the baby. She asks me every day how the baby is doing. She snuggles up to my tummy and pats it all the time. She'll ask me if the baby is hungry. Baby, baby, baby........And she tells anyone who will listen!

Alex is also excited about it, but in his own way. Alex is just a different kid. Sunday morning after breaking the news, we told them we had a picture hanging on the fridge, and they both got really wide eyes. Then we told them that it wasn't much of a picture, the baby was only 8 weeks old when the picture was taken, it just looks like a blob, and the baby was only the size of a grape. Kylie takes off running to go get it. Alex stays behind. So we ask him if he wants to see the picture, and he says, "Nah, no thanks. I don't want it to look like a grape."

We go to church later and Ryan has to leave early to go to work. All morning and on the way to and from church Kylie just wants to talk about the baby. In the end, I tell the kids that there are lots of pictures on the internet that show more than the ultrasound picture we got and that I would show them when we got home. They were both excited about that. So after church we get online together and I show them the detailed pictures of a baby in the womb starting at 8 weeks and then every few weeks until birth. I thought that would do it, but then they wanted to know what it looked like when it first got in my tummy, so we start going backwards until we finally get to the conception picture (I've posted a similar photo), and it sparks a few questions. Kylie's were very analytical. What are those things, and why do they look like that, etc.....Alex took one look at the sperm and egg photo and had only one question: "Mom, is the baby going to have a tail?"

So that's where we are now. I'm about 10 weeks down, 30 to go, and my world is full of baby talk. Some quizzical, some comical.