Wow, you are so big!” one of the boys shouted, pointing a chubby finger at me from across the room.
I entered work on Monday dressed in a tighter shirt than my usual outfits. Honestly, I struggle to stretch most of my clothes over my tummy these days. The kids at work were so excited to see how much baby and I have grown. They ran over to me to put their hands on my stomach. “Hey, he’s kicking me!” they giggled. They pressed their ears to the stretched fabric. “I can hear her,” one of them says. One of the kids has a new baby brother at home. She loves to talk about him and how he’s growing. “Mommy and I are going to visit you in the hospital,” she tells me before racing back to the playground, trying to be the first one to the top of the slide.
They can’t really hear baby, right?
One of the boys puts his Godzilla toy into his shirt when he sees me. “Like you, Ms. Kristen,” he says with a toothy grin. Another tries to lift my shirt to find the mysterious baby that everyone is talking about. He’s a bit sneaky and loves to hide from me on the playground. The first time he appeared from behind a slide and lifted my shirt, I was shocked. “What are you doing!?” I almost yelled. “Looking for baby,” he told me. Since then, he has been giving me a look that says, “I believe you, but I don’t get it. Where is the baby?”
I was surprised to learn that when I asked the kids, “Should I name the baby after you?” they were less than excited. “Hey, that’s my name!” they all shout. Silly me.
The kids cannot wait to meet baby, and neither can I. They ask me questions that I have no answer to.
”When is baby coming?”
”What does baby look like?”
”Can I bring baby dinosaurs at the hospital?”
Sometimes…