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Sparkle (10)
I've probably said "OMG I'm going to be a grandmother!" 800 times in the last five months. And when I wasn't saying that, I was saying "WOW!" and "This is awesome!" and also, did I mention, "OMG!"?
It's weird. I've never been one of those moms who spent a lot of time thinking about what it might be like for my children to grow up and parent their own children. Or what it might be like to be a grandmother. If my kids became parents -- OK. If I never became a grandmother -- that's OK, too. It was just not something I ever focused on. Even when Jenn, my oldest daughter, told me that she and Teddy were going to try to have a baby, I didn't spend much time picturing what that would look like or feel like. I pretty much never thought about it unless she called me and was speaking in that voice she uses when she either has something big to tell me or is trying to decide whether she wants to talk about something big.
When the call came, and she was using that voice -- it didn't even cross my mind that she was going to tell me she was pregnant and for quite a long time, all I could really say was "OMG!" and "AWESOME!" and I might even have let out an "OMFG, you're kidding me!" or two. (Yea, I'm that kind of mom.) Once I could get beyond that initial shock, not that I've really gotten over that shock, mind you, I started to ask real questions. Stuff like...
- When are you going to make an appointment at the clinic?
- When do you think you'll tell people?
- When you choose a name, will you tell people or will you keep it a secret until the baby is born?
- Do you want to know the gender?
- Will Teddy actually BE there for the birth of the baby?
- Most importantly, you're going to take belly shots so I can see the elephant (tattoo) grow, right?
Much to my frustration, my daughter who had been trying to get pregnant for quite some time had almost no answers to these questions. (In some ways she is her mother's daughter and other ways, not so much.) So I did what I do --
- I urged her to make the appointment soon but also told her that if she wanted to wait to make sure that Ted could go with her, that would be cool -- but in a military hospital, that first appointment isn't much more than peeing in a cup and giving blood.
- I told her that I understood how hard it was to tell people early in the pregnancy and that it's even harder when you're five time zones away from most of your family and I promised I would not blog or Facebook the news until she gave the OK. (Though I did break the promise and finally tell some of my coworkers before Jenn officially gave the OK - it was taking FOREVER for her to get some folks on the phone and a future grandmother can only wait so long before she has to tell SOMEONE.)
- I told her that I wouldn't be upset if she decided not to tell me which names they'd chosen until the baby was born.
- I reassured her that I didn't have an opinion on knowing the gender beforehand.
- And of course, I told her that I hoped Teddy will be there but if he isn't -- I WILL BE THERE.
- Then I put my foot down with YOU WILL TAKE BELLY SHOTS OF THE ELEPHANT.
Time passes and she called to tell me I was right about that first appointment. A little more time passes and she sends me a text message with a photo from a very early ultrasound that was done just to look for twins, since there is a history of twins in the family. More time passes and she's ignoring my request for belly shots. She's had no morning sickness, which annoys me since I was sick non-stop for six months when I was pregnant with HER. She's craving apples, which made me laugh because apples, really?
This led us to think up fun "apple" names for the baby:
- Apple, like Gwyneth
- Johnny, like Johnny Appleseed
- Mac, like Macintosh apples
- Fiona, like, err, Fiona Apple
- Pippin, we really like Pippin.
- Adam or Eve, maybe?
