“Your sons are killing me,” Magda has grown fond of saying. It’s interesting for me to notice how much more accusatory that sentence sounds with a plural subject. Last week a quick visit to the doctor returned a “95%” likelihood of this latest swelling turning out to be a brother rather than sister for young Adam. Our experience with obstetricians is limited, but so far each time this one has claimed to see 95% of a penis, she’s been dead on.

Though we’ve known all along that the possibility of a second boy hovered somewhere around 50%, now that it’s all but sure it feels quite different. Like terrifying. Recent saccharine images notwithstanding, Adam can be a real handful, an enormous little macho pain in the ass, a terrorist-extortionist, an animal, and the idea of giving him the malleable clay that a younger brother would likely be for him to mold in his own couch-divin’, bone-crackin’, pig-bitin’, rootin’-tootin’ Yosemite Sam image is unsettling, to say the least. Magda already feels assailed from two sides, and the latest version isn’t even out yet.

At the same time, she’s very pleased. Regular readers will recall that Magda has a morbid fear of Barbie® and the color pink, as well as a ready list of other reasons she is generally against the idea of having a daughter. I’m in quite a contrary situation: while I won’t say I’m disappointed  that we’ll have another boy, Magda has also declared a permanent ban on all procreating following this birth, and I am still getting used to the idea that I will never have a daughter. I somehow always thought that I would.

As Magda has pointed out before, “we already have all the boy-baby-crap.” Quite true. But what harm could there be in letting this latest boy play with Barbie®s on a strictly experimental basis? I’m sure Adam would be tolerant.