Butterfly Wings

Today, we told the kids the news. We decided that they should be the first, besides ourselves, to know. It was fun to see their facial expressions change as the information registered in their brains. They started trying to talk to the baby in my tummy, even though we explained that it was only about 1.5cm long and probably couldn’t hear anything yet. I don’t want to discourage them, though - they are so excited and so uninhibited in their relationship with this new sibling. I remember the first attempts at talking to my very first growing belly, and even the baby once he was outside. I had so much trouble letting go of those inhibitions and not being embarrassed to talk to him.

The boys decided to dig out the baby/toddler toys that were still hiding in a corner of their toy collection. We reminded them that there was still a long time to wait, and that it would be more helpful to clean up the rest of the toys first. Their response was to play with the baby toys themselves.

Every now and then, they would randomly come up to me and talk to my tummy again, and a couple of times put their ears up to it to try to listen for kicking. Again, I reassured them that it wasn’t time for that quite yet.

The Man and I discussed this “telling” thing from time to time all week. As far as we were concerned, we would have been happy to announce it immediately. However, the reasons for keeping it mostly to ourselves still stand. We decided we would tell the boys today, and then, tonight, we told our respective parents. At the moment, we’re not even telling our own siblings. There’s plenty of time for that anyway.

My one remaining dilemma is this: I actually feel more like telling selected friends before I feel the need to tell more family members. I don’t know if that sounds weird to anybody else, but while I love my family, I feel closer to some friends and would like to tell them, partly for their support and prayers. I’m a little bit torn. I’ll have to think about it some more.