Wait, Seven Kids, Not Six

For every dark side, there is a shiny side.  After so much dark, we received a big dose of shiny over the weekend.  The Nephew and his wife are PREGNANT!   We are all so excited.  They've known for a bit now but wanted to wait until she was nearly out of her first trimester, which matched up with Father's Day.

So, if you're following along, this baby makes SIX kids.  Seven counting his thirteen year old brother-in-law, whom they have temporary custody.  Talk about a Crowded House!  I'm hesitant to do the math but this baby makes my ninth grandniece/nephew.  All under the ages of 14.

They had the ultrasound yesterday and discovered that there is only one baby.  I will admit to being slightly disappointed that there is only one baby.  After having triplets, one would think that they would be begging the Universe for a single baby but they were surprisingly calm about the whole thing.

There will be nearly ten years between the triplets and the baby.  This means the baby will be the youngest and yet, also be an only when the trips go to college, etc. Kind of like I was.  I think this is part of the reason they are so chill about it.  It's not as if the kids are all young and in diapers, they're all schoolagers now and two of them are in middle school.

We asked about the kids reactions and they were varied and funny.  The eldest (C1) was all teenagery about it: cool, fine, whatever.  C2 is excited, thinking about all the cool things they will do together, Girl Triplet is trying to figure out how she is going to go to school and take care of the baby, Boy Triplet C is "That's So Cool" while Boy Triplet P is like "Wait, what?"   The new child, I don't know the easiest way to describe him to y'all yet, said and this is a direct quote: "That's cool, if that's what you want to do."

Go back a month or two to when Kevin's mom was having surgery.  I didn't know this but the Nephew was the last one to speak with her before she went into surgery.  He said he went back into the room, leaned over and whispered "Nana, we're pregnant. We're having a baby in January."  He said she lit up the room, hearing the news.

How sweet of that boy to send his grandma off to surgery with such huge news.  He told her that she had to keep it a secret when she woke up.  Thus implying that she was going to wake up, when there was big doubt that she would.

I'm excited about this baby in a way that I haven't been with the others. Not to imply that I didn't look forward to the others. It's just after the past three years of abject awfulness that we've had, this baby is such good news.  Nephew has become like a son to us, even more than before.  I feel connected to this baby and can't wait until he or she is here. 

Babies are such good news.