Sunday dinner is always an adventure at my house, but especially so when there is reason to celebrate and everyone comes and brings their dog, too. Such an event was in full swing last Sunday as we celebrated my brother's birthday. Somewhere in the midst of the fun, my sister, who is pregnant and due in about three weeks, and her husband snuck in. When some of my neices and nephew saw her husband they swarmed around him in excitement. They just love their unlce Kevin. But actually, they were just excitedly asking where Aunt Megan was. Feeling slightly rejected, Kevin, always the funny one, replied that she wasn't there, but that the baby was upstairs. Frenzy ensued.
"She had the baby!?" shrieked my neice, Adria. I think there even may have been a shout of "What the heck!?" from one of the kids as they sprinted to the stairs to see the wee boy. Their bubbles were swiftly burst when what they found upstairs was Megan with her belly still very much full of baby.
I found this episode to be slightly amusing, but what was even better came about ten minutes later. I was going to my room for a bit of respite and relaxation, not to mention a hidden candybar, and I found my four-year-old nephew, Bryce, peeking quietly through the door.
"Whacha' doin, Bryce?" I asked.
He looked at me inquisitively for a moment then asked, "But where's that baby?"
"What baby?"
"That baby that just came outa Megan."
It was then that I had to inform him of the cruel truth that his cousin had not, as yet, "come out of Megan." He was, of course, slightly crushed. Yet, he soon cheered up with the prospects of seeing the baby in the near future. As I explained it to him, his big green eyes brightened under his mass of curly hair and he was soon grinning up at me with visions of becoming best friends with his new cousin dancing through his head. He then trotted, unfazed, down the hall to get some icecream, soon to forget that anything but the sweet coldness of his vanilla icecream existed.
