Dear Newbie, I suppose I'm being unfair in assuming you've already gotten a good read on me. I feel as though I know quite a bit about you, even though I haven't heard your cry (will it be one of those bleating polite ones or one of those incessantly demanding ones?) or examined your dimpled knuckles or eaten any of your toes yet. I know that you're a tenaciously strong kicker, that you take an interest in your sister's voice, and that you have a really cute nose. I saw you on an ultrasound yesterday as the midwife (the one who sometimes reaches into Mama's Lady Garden with cold instruments? Yeah, that lady) thought you might be in breech position. But the good news is that you're head-down, which means you are the more cooperative of my children these days. Your sister has been, to put it gently, enthusiastic about negotiating the terms of everything. I am looking forward to meeting you, and being deliriously in love with you, as I was and still am with your sister, even though she requires a puppetry play in two acts to coax her onto the toilet multiple times a day.

We'll have a lifetime to get to know one another, which is wonderfully daunting, isn't it? But one thing I can tell you about me, in case you haven't yet quite gathered it all from your corner of my uterus, is that I really enjoy being a parent. It's one of the few things I think I was created for -- that and diagramming sentences. And writing the occasional sympathy note or consumer review. I'm good at those, as well.

I love having my own family because we get to figure things out together and erect our own little totems of tradition (e.g. one of your daddy's and my favorites is taking some kind of boat ride around our wedding anniversary every year, which is odd since your mama gets extreme motion sickness just from walking and glancing down at her watch...but anyway, just a conundrum I guess).

I am also a bit of a loner by nature. I have heaps of good friends but for such a small woman, I do prefer a lot of space to myself. So having a family has refined me into a person that actually prefers the din of coffee makers and toy pianos and NPR and pitter-patter of feet all competing for airtime at the same time. I'm looking forward to you joining the chaotic melody of our home.

I suppose everything else we'll just have to learn about each other when we meet. And since someone asks me every .04 seconds when that will be, the choice is really yours as to whether you want to make a liar out of me. Heehee. I'm funny. And passive aggressive sometimes, too! And so much more. Come out soon, won't you, Newbie 'Nother Baby?

Love, Mama

***

Please come soon, Newbie 'Nother Baby. There are so many toys that await....

And Big Sister gets lonely for a companion sometimes...

...and girlfriend can't handle all these chores by herself :)

Sometimes, the theme song to "Cheers" is not your theme song. Because sometimes you need to go where no one knows your name, where everybody is not the same. You need to make that 2.5 hour drive to North Conway, New Hampshire, to the nice albeit cheesy resort place to do things you wouldn't normally do, but that you need to do, just because you can. Sometimes you need to spend a few hard-earned quarters in the game room...