Life in the Clark Lane: A Brother Named Lisa

I'm sitting here writing while Lilly sleeps, and by doing so, there is a laundry list of things that I'm choosing not to do. Over the past few days, when I should be doing things like cleaning out closets and rearranging furniture, I've chosen instead to knit hats and make blankets for my friends that are having babies this fall, make necklaces that I'm currently obsessed with (in every color), finish my book, and now, write this blog. As this baby's arrival gets closer, I find myself sitting and thinking a lot more. Maybe it's the pregnancy hormones, or maybe it's just the natural feelings that come with being a mum. Whatever the reason, I enjoy these quiet moments that allow me to reflect, and I've been enjoying them more often lately. Whether I'm out for a walk by myself or swimming alone in the pool, or lying in bed in the morning while Jim is out training and Lilly is still asleep, or passing time in the middle of the night when I'm finding it harder and harder to sleep, I think. And wonder. Lilly seems so grown up at moments and then so little to me at the same time. Last night, Jim and I went in to check on Lilly before we went to bed, as we do every night. And in that instance, she looked so tiny, and so perfect, in her bed. We started hypothesizing about this new baby. Do we even remember how to take care of a newborn? What if this baby doesn't sleep? Will this baby have hair? Do you think we'll have another active baby or a baby that prefers sitting to running laps? In a nutshell, how is this little baby going to compare to Lilly, the only baby we really know and love? Even though we know that in a year, we'll look back on our life before this baby and be amazed that there were ever just three of us, and we know our love will increase exponentially once this baby is born, it's hard to imagine one year down the road right now. It was just as impossible to imagine how Lilly would become such a central part of our lives before she was born two years ago. We know that there are no two Lillys in this world! So what is this baby going to be like? No doubt, he or she will be unique, just as Lilly is. Only time will tell...

I think that Lilly is starting to understand more and more what is going on. She talks about the baby in my tummy all the time, although she still tells people that she's going to have "a brother named Lisa." Whenever she tells anyone this, they always look at me with a confused face, like Lilly is speaking the truth. Unless Lilly knows something that we don't, her prediction will probably not come true, but it's sweet that she arrived at this conclusion on her own. Lilly comes up and gives my stomach kisses all the time. She puts her one on my stomach and says she's sharing it with the baby (I'm sure she'll feel differently about sharing one when the baby is here!) When I ask her to sit on the couch instead of the ground so we can put on her shoes, she responds by saying, "Because it's hard for you to bend over Mummy? Because the baby in your tummy is so big?" She points to the box that contains her old crib packed away and tells us that it's a crib for the new baby because she's a big girl and sleeps in her "huuuuuuge bed." Lilly loves my doctor's appointments--I'd even venture to say that she enjoys them more than I do. And why not? I go in and get shots and blood taken and she comes away with a roll full of princess stickers. When we get home, she takes out her doctor's kit, takes my blood pressure and tells me that "it's good, Mummy," and then tells me to lie down so she can listen to the "baby's heart beep" which goes, "whoosh, whoosh, whoosh." Whenever I tell her that we're going to the doctor, her eyes light up, she jumps up and down and yells, "hippeeeee" (Lilly says hippeee instead of yippee, and I corrected her once so she said yippee for a little while but went right back to hippee. I've decided that I like hippee much better!) Although I don't think she'll really understand what is going on until the baby comes home, she knows there's something different. She snuggles with us a lot more and asks for more "huggies." Both Jim and I are very happy to oblige.

One of our favorite Lilly expressions at the moment is, "Oh yes, of course not." Somehow, she has confused two expressions (I'm not sure how or why, but confusing expressions does tend to run in our family. Mum and I are both pretty good at mixing up idioms, and Joseph just wrote a blog about how Liana does the same thing...so maybe it's a girl thing?) Anyway, I'll ask Lilly if she wants to help make dinner and she'll run into the kitchen yelling, "oh yes, of course not." You only have to look at her to realize that she means, "of course!" but somehow, the "not" has just slipped in there. Jim asked her last night if she wanted to go to bed so he could read her some books and again, we heard, "oh yes, of course not!" We gave each other one of those looks--one of those smiles that says this is a priceless moment, and then Jim went in with Lil to read her books.