Month: May 2008

We’ve had a couple large milestones here in La Casa De B. in recent months that I’ve failed to mention.

M. left the pull ups behind in March. It was one of those “We’re down to about ten pull ups, do we want to buy any more?” changes that we parents have to force upon our kids sometimes. She was cool with it, though, as she was ready. She had been taking naps without a pull up for about a month and avoided any incidents. We went back-and-forth for awhile, until the last pull up was gone, but she was super excited to be sleeping like a big girl. And, knock on wood, we’re three months into it and we’ve still had no accidents. It makes it easier to buy more fun stuff at Costco when you only have one box of diapers in the cart.

Second, C. finally started sleeping through the night around the same time. We do struggle to get her to sleep some nights, but most nights she goes to bed and stays asleep until the morning. When she does wake up, you just have to go tuck her back in and tell her to go to sleep and she drops right off again. Her funny (to her at least) trick is to go to bed, be half-asleep after I leave the room (I usually lay with her for 10-20 minutes to try to get her to sleep), and then about 10 minutes later, get out of bed and open her door. She waits with the door cracked, peeking out, until I come up the stairs to put her back down. Some nights she’ll act surprised and run back to bed giggling. Other nights, as soon as she sees me, she flings the door open, runs to the banister, and greets me with a big smile like it’s morning.

The only downside to C. sleeping all night is that she’s been getting up earlier in the morning. Most days one girl or the other comes into our room between 6:00 and 6:30 and crawls into bed with us. (S. might dispute the “us” part, since the girls always get into her side of the bed and disturb her while I roll over and go back to sleep on my side.) The problems usually start when the second girl comes in. Girl #2, for whatever reason, almost always comes in whining and crying, which often sets the other one off. It’s bad enough when your kids come wake you up. It’s even worse when they do so with tears.

But C. sleeps at night, which was by far her worst issue in the first 22 months of her life. Things aren’t that bad.

Three lines. That’s what the sonogram showed today. For those of you who have never been lucky enough to sit in on a sonogram, those three lines indicate you’re growing a little girl. I believe we’ve officially debunked the Chinese Birth Calendar and proven that S. and I are only able to produce girls. As I said last week, what was important to me wasn’t the gender of the kid but that it and S. were progressing normally. The sonogram confirmed all of that, as well. So it was a good visit to the hospital.

The little girl was not terribly cooperative. Most of the time she was rolled into a ball, with her feet and her head in roughly the same location. She put her hands over her face at times. At others, she pressed her face into various Mom body parts as if she was trying to get away from us.

As I said in an e-mail some of you received, now comes the hard part. The wardrobe is taken care of. We understand how to take care of girl babies. But I’m wondering how the hell I’m going to come up with another name for a girl. It was hard enough with the first two. Maybe we’ll be like those parents who don’t name their kids and let them name themselves when they’re old enough (Isn’t that how Picabo Street got her name?).

Even though it’s a girl, she still might get a Mario Chalmers jersey.

I’ve only obliquely discussed the impending addition of a third kid to the Brannan fam on the blog. Part of that is despite our broad e-mail and phone broadcast of the news awhile back, we were waiting to tell a few folks less directly connected to us. Although I doubt they have access to the blog, I wanted to be sure. But I think everyone who needs to know knows now, so it’s no longer off limits.

All has gone well so far. Apparently the Mrs. now qualifies for “advanced maternal age,” so we’ve had a few more tests this time around. Thus far, everything points to a normal pregnancy. Today we scheduled a sonogram for next Wednesday. If the little fetus cooperates, we’ll have some news regarding pink or blue that day.

People have been asking me since we shared our news whether I was pulling for a boy or not. The easy answer is I’m hoping both mother and baby make it through nine months safely and it’s too late to do anything about it, anyway.

But, as you all know, I am a thinker, and I’ve devoted some time to the subject. To be honest, I’m a little fearful of the prospects. With the first, everything was a bit of a blur since it was all new and we were busy putting things together, painting, buying stuff, going to showers, etc. The second was a breeze, and knowing our plan was to have three, no pressure either way. For #3, everything is a blur again, but for different reasons. We’re chasing #1 and #2 around. I know it’s a marathon and not a sprint, so I don’t obsess about the details as much.

When I do think of it though, I find myself pulled in different directions. A boy would be awesome, no doubt. I will strive to treat my kids the same, knowing no matter how hard you try each kid will be treated slightly differently, but let’s face it, there’s something about having a boy as a man that is special. M. and C. can bat their eyes at me to try to get what they want, but a son will be happy to go outside and play catch with dad for hours at a time. One day he’ll be happy to sit next to me watching a game, not talking about much other than the game.

And that’s when the fear comes in: I don’t want to treat the third differently if it’s a boy just because it’s a boy. I’m sure it’s not something I need to spend too much time worrying about, because whether my kids are swimmers, soccer players, or captains of the chess team, I’m going to support them in their activities. But I don’t want the girls thinking I enjoy going to the baseball diamond more than going to their events. If I show a little more enthusiasm for tossing the football around than going to a choir recital, will the girls never be able to find a stable relationship because their dad neglected them?

Probably not. But the thought has crossed my mind.

So, basically, I’m way overthinking it. Besides, I have the girl thing down. The teenage years are going to be an utter disaster anyway, why not add one more girl to the mix? And I may not be capable of producing a boy anyway. Or my wife’s body might fight off all the little boy sperms and accept only girls. In other words, it’s out of my hands and I’ll just hope everything continues to look normal next week.

But if we do find out it’s a boy, I’m totally buying a little Mario Chalmers jersey when I visit Kansas City next month.