Magda [looking at self sideways in full-length mirror]: Look at this! It can’t possibly get any bigger!
Me: That is ridiculous.
Magda: I can’t stand it much longer.
Me: It still seems to me like a dumb way to make new humans.
Magda: How can it work?
Me: It certainly argues against ‘intelligent design’!
Magda: It’s crazy!
Me: What’s wrong with sitting on an egg?

When Magda was pregnant with Adam, it was all miracle-of-lifey and weepy-wonderful, but with this baby, we’re sorry to say, the novelty has somewhat worn off. I mean, yes, it’s interesting to watch/feel the creature roil the tense surface of Magda’s distended abdomen, but interesting in a kind of ewww, gross, how can you stand having that thing inside you? way, rather than the soft-focus here grows my firstborn son way. Also, to be fair, this pregnancy has been vastly more fraught, by which I mean difficult, painful, and enormous, than the Adam pregnancy was. Adam’s was (for the most part) smooth and dreamlike, and Magda’s frequent refrain was It’s cool to have a baby inside. I haven’t heard her saying that this time around. This time, it just seems like a ridiculously inefficient way of making new humans, and I wonder if some other alternative couldn’t have worked out better. That said, I am fully in support of the thesis that if men had to bear children, there wouldn’t be any children.

calendar.jpg

Deep thanks to everyone who wrote to express interest in the arrival date of the upcoming baby, and for all the suggestions, serious and non-, for middle names with which to honor, saddle, and torment. As you can see in the calendar image above, the month of January is pretty well staked out, but plenty of slots remain available for late-comers; the pool will remain open until habemus babem, though I’m certainly not going to be modifying the calendar image every time someone chimes in*.

Now that I have turned our reproductive strategies into an internet spectacle, I feel a certain amount of pressure to post the news here as soon as possible upon having any, so you can count on getting word relatively soon after this child emerges into the harsh light of January.

Or possibly February.

[*] And if you do want to chime in, please do it in the original baby pool comments queue.