A Half Dozen

Per my request, Matt told everyone on Sunday that we’re expecting Kennedy 6.0 in early February. I’m a mile wide at 10 weeks and I could tell everyone was looking at me and wishing they could ask. I was seriously toying with the idea of waiting until I was almost giving birth before admitting it and forcing so many loved ones into awkward social trauma by saying aggrievdly, ‘NO! I’m just fat! And I’m throwing up because I have a chronic flu! What kind of person are you?’

We’re all tickled pink. The children are wildly picking names and making plans. Elphine wants it to be a girl named Violet. Aloucious wants a boy named Daniel. Romulus wants it to actually be Spiderman. I’m pretty sure the only person who won’t be uniformly thrilled will be Marigold, but who knows, she might surprise us all.

I’ve been telling everyone that I feel terrible, but it must not be too bad because I stripped all the kitchen wall paper and painted the kitchen last week, and yesterday I surprisingly decided to make French Fries from scratch (a stupid thing to do because I’m the only person in this family who will eat white potato and so I was forced to eat the entire bowl myself, lathered in mayonnaise–the fries, not me–Delicious!)

I have one small regret. Years ago I told everyone I ‘wanted six’. The response overwhelmingly has been ‘well, now you have your six’ with a slight raise of the eyebrows. WHAT is everyone going to say when we go for #7? I wish I’d said from the get go that I wanted to be Michelle Dugger and have 20. But, I didn’t know about her back then, and I was young and foolish, and six seemed like an outrageous lot of children. Am I allowed to grow in wisdom and maturity and up my number at this late date? How ’bout not 20 (I’m already too old) but, say, an even dozen? Isn’t there a book about that? And also, my grandmother wanted 12. Its a Biblical Number.