19 Weeks: Then and Now

A little older.  A lot more tired and grumpy.  Pretty much the same ol’ 19-week bump.

The biggest difference being, of course, the 26-lb. growth that’s since attached itself to my leg, er… I mean, the addition of the sweet Mama’s Girl constantly demanding my attention.

Her MamasGirl-itis has become so ridiculous lately, that if I even think about leaving her with Mr. Candy to go pee by myself, she will immediately handcuff herself to my leg.  True story.  Since I’m pregnant and all, this happens approximately four million times a day.  The handcuffs haven’t seen this much action in our house since, well, ever.  (Lame, I know, but some things are just better in theory.  Like Communism.  And chocolate beer.  And “sexy” metal cuffs that dig painfully into your wrists.)

I shared this development with her daycare teacher — the neediness, not our handcuff history — and she believes Skye can sense the baby.  As did the Russian woman who stopped me on the street a month before I got pregnant and intoned, “You’re going to have a boy!”  Oh yes, she did.  I responded as most any person alone on the street with a crazy old woman would — and smiled uncomfortably before getting the hell out of there.  You know that whole “I see dead people” scene in The Sixth Sense?  Yeah, it was as creepy as that, only it was like she had peered into my womb and whispered, “I smell baby.”  If I had known, however, that she really was psychic, I would have asked her who the mother is on How I Met Your Mother.  Enough with the parade of guest stars.  My patience is running out already!

So now Skye smells baby, too, and I don’t think she’s fond of the scent*.  People have suggested preparing her for the arrival of Baby Freedom by telling her over and over again there’s a baby in my belly.  At which point our almost 18-month-old daughter will do one of three things:  1)  Pick up her doll — cleverly (and now inconveniently) named “Baby” — to show me that Baby is NOT, in fact, in my belly; 2)  Lift up my shirt and stick her finger in my belly button (digging for babies?); or 3) Look at me as if I’m nuts.  For which I can’t blame her because the whole baby-in-the-belly thing still sounds nuts to me, too.  Let’s face it:  A child her age isn’t going to be able to wrap her head around all of this, or what it’s going to mean for her, so Mr. Candy has a solution for helping Skye adjust to her baby brother when he in fact arrives:

Bribe her with her very own iPad.  Just what all the baby books recommend!

For the record, Mr. Candy, that bribe would also make a perfectly lovely push gift for YOUR WIFE.  You know, to help me adjust to the idea of having to do this again:

Just a thought.

*However, 9 out of 10 people agree it still smells better than the new Mariah Carey perfume