A brother for Ben

Yes folks, we know. And now you know! A baby boy is growing and moving and dancing a lively jig against my bowels. The ultrasound was last week and he looks good to our untrained eye, no extra limbs or anything, lots of spunk. He may, we think, even have been sucking his thumb, which we desperately tried and failed to convince Ben was a suitable form of self-soothing. He was a true “need-to-suck” baby, and is still pretty orally fixated. But no thumb! He thankfully seems to be, at 21 months, finally moving away from putting everything he picks up on the ground into his gullet! Of course now that I’ve written that, he might take a sudden fancy to those yummy looking cigarette butts everywhere.

Holy! A boy, another boy. The grandparents are verklempt (choked up), since knowing the sex is making it so much more real for them. A boy! I worry on the one hand that being of the same sex, but sharing only half their genes, the brothers will compare themselves more directly (think body size; chance of balding!). Perhaps it will be the opposite! I am sure temperament has more to do with it than genes anyway, since brothers take all forms and relate in all kinds of way. I have a brother, so I don’t know much about bro-bro relations, nor does A. Everyone says it’s so good for a boy to have a brother to play with. Who knows? My brother liked to play my games but he was also smaller and I was bossy! We think Ben’ll make a great big brother! He is a fairly cautious kid, and seems to genuinely care when his friends are sad. The Sanskrit name he was given is even Balarama who is the wonderful big bro to Krishna.

Anyway, after a moment of feeling the loss of a potential daughter, since two kids is probably it for now or ever, I have launched into the happy/crazy world of boy names. Wow, is it ever harder to name a boy. You can really get away with more for girls, and the options are so much vaster. We still have a few girl names, since my parents were told I was a boy. But this wee baby’s, um, boy parts were pretty clear! A boy. Wow. This is really happening…

E