number two

I haven't had the time to get very philosophical about this pregnancy.

With Auden I knew to the day how pregnant I was and knew according to several books and several hundred websites which developments were taking place ON THAT VERY DAY. And then I'd ponder the appearance of eyelashes or a brain stem or lanugo on a being I hadn't met but knew so intimately that I wondered secretly if he could actually hear my thoughts. You know, through my blood or something. I talked to him all the time, made sure I sang a lot, too, and listened to good music. We nicknamed him Grover and tried to imagine what he'd be like and how our world would change with him in it.

This time around it's just different. For a little while my priority was finding the right maternity pants (which, you'll remember, was a laugh and a half last time) because I'm vain and had to have a fashionable way to show off the bump. I was briefly rapturous when I felt those first fluttery movements inside, but half the time I'd forget that I was pregnant at all because mama mama mama! truck juice giraffe rock ball!

Now, suddenly, I'm coming up on 28 weeks and that February due date isn't looking so far away and Holy Cats ANOTHER BABY -- she's going to need a name!

We kept Auden's name a secret and plan to do the same with this one, but I don't have the slightest inkling. Names I liked before just don't seem right, and even making a list of possibilities is more of a perfunctory task than a delightful brainstorm... Every time I try to visualize calling her by her name, introducing her to people, writing her name on school applications and to-do lists, hoping to jar my cosmic memory -- or at least get some initials to work with -- I end up with the internal equivalent of the scene in Being John Malkovich where Jon Cusak is trying to guess Katherine Keener's name and he's all "Mmmmmaaaa vvveerrrrrr dannnn Kaaaa sssaaaarrrr Chhhrrrrrr Aaannnn waaaaa Grreeee....?"

So, no leads. We can't even find a nickname that sticks. We tried jokingly referring to her as Grizelda, or The Griz; Jason's mom likes the name Isabella (after her own grandmother), & calls her Bella. My mom told me how my sister didn't have a name for a couple days after she was born and they just called her Maisha, which means 'girl' in Dutch. I thought for sure that would catch on, but Jason couldn't remember it the next day and said, "What are we calling her, Monisha?" Instead we most consistently refer to her as the new baby, or worse, Number Two.

But I want to take this moment to LOVE being pregnant, because I do. I totally do. And I'm not sure how to love it more than I do, but I'm bent on discovering a way, aside from clingy clothes and excessive belly-rubbing, to remind myself this is probably the last time I'm going to do this and it's definitely the last time I'm going to have just Auden... and even though my revelations about gestational magic are curtailed by a more potent combination of Swiss Cheese Brain + Busy Toddler, and even though I'm sure I'll be waddling and snoring and heartburning and cursing by the end of the 9th month -- I mean, we have yet to add snow to this equation! -- I want to have some record that I enjoyed every minute of having this baby inside me.

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