telling the kids

Originally we had planned to tell the kids (and then everyone else) at 12 weeks.  But at 7 weeks I was going to Utah for women's conference and I knew I couldn't hide it from Krista and my mom  (nor did I want too).  So we decided to "go for it" and tell the kids before I left for Utah.

We decided to tell Brock alone and first.  I knew Noah, Megan, and Madison would be thrilled to have another baby.  They love babies and toddlers.  But Brock, he has never loved babies.  Even as a young child, he has just never been drawn to them.  He is responsible with them, and wants them to be happy, and if needs be he can play with them, but it is not something he loves.  On top of that I know he feels responsible for the younger 3 kids and I knew that he would now feel responsible for this new baby.  I wanted him to get a chance to talk about these feelings and feel heard with out the excitement of the other three drowning him out or making him feel guilty for having his feelings.  We also wanted to make sure he knew that he was not responsible for this new baby.  Plus telling him alone and first would help him to feel big and old and special.

It went great.  He did feel how I knew he would feel and the 3 of us had a great conversation.  The first thing he said when we said, "how do you feel about that?" was, "well, excited and nervous.  Nervous because instead of having 3 people to take care of now I have 4".  I love that I know my children.  He came to the announcement with the other 3 with a big smile on his facing feeling quite good about the fact that he was in the "know".

We sat in our living room and called a family council.  I said, "we are going to have a baby".  Immediately there followed shrieks and screams and jumping up and down from Megan, Madison and Noah.  Brock just sat there and smiled.  After a a minute or so of that Megan stopped and said, "wait, I thought you were too old to have a baby?"  I told her I was most certainly not too old to have a baby!  Then someone asked if it was a boy or a girl and we explained we didn't know, and then Madison pointed out that what gender this baby is shifts the votes.  You see, every vote in this house ends in a tie - either older kids vs younger kids or girls vs boys - in our house it doesn't matter  - it ends the same - 2 to 2.  This child is like a supreme court justice nominee right here - it will yield a lot of power and the kids know it.  The stakes are pretty high. 

From that time on I have almost completely disappeared to Megan and Madison - I am now something carrying a baby.  They talk to the baby, say good morning, good night, good bye, hello and everything to the baby.  They don't address me at all except to ask, "how is the baby?"  It is pretty adorable. 

As far as gender goes, we don't really care if its a girl or a boy.  We have learned both are pretty great.  When we look at the bigger picture (2 more kids).  I would like either a girl and a boy or 2 boys.  Mostly because we have wanted another little boy since we had Noah.  We know his name and we have waited for him to come to our family.  So if we have 2 girls... we might just have to have another.  ha  But if we have girl and a boy I would like the girl first because she will be closer to the girls in age.  The boy would be so far apart in age that it wouldn't really be like growing up with those boys anyways.  But... I don't get to choose and for that I am thankful.  We are just so excited for this new little addition and can't wait to see what our lives will be like a year from now!