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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
Probably not. But the thought has crossed my mind.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,14],"class_list":["post-1225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-family","tag-parenting"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15192,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1225\/revisions\/15192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}