From the Mouths of Babes

I believe that I have mentioned in previous posts (however briefly) that my fiance has a two-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. She spends every other weekend with us and she's hilarious. She's very bright and quite well-behaved - while she is definitely into her "terrible two" stage, even "terrible" for her isn't usually too bad. I won't ever go so far as to say that I consider her to be like my own daughter, but we definitely have a very obvious and mutual affection for one another. And her father adores her.

We have tried explaining to her as best we can that she is going to have a little brother. She seems to understand that somewhere in my belly, there is a baby. Whether or not she really gets the term "brother" is up for debate - while she occasionally uses the term, I tend to think that the true concept of that sort of relationship is beyond her grasp at this point. But the biggest thing she can't seem to understand is why she can't see the baby now. Allow me to recount what is quite possibly the cutest thing anyone has ever said to me.

While the three of us were lounging together in a Georgia hotel room this past weekend, the little guy was kicking around in there and I began to sort of rub my belly in response to his gymnastics.

My step-daughter noticed this, as she often does, and asked what I was doing. I told her that the baby was doing tricks in my belly. She proceeded to scoot over to me and lift up my shirt to look at my stomach. She glanced up at me inqusitively.

"Your baby brother is in there," I said, pointing to my belly.

"I wanna see!" she said, poking at my protruding belly button. "Open it up!"

I almost died laughing right there on our tacky hotel comforter.

"But the baby's not ready to come out yet," I finally replied. "He still has a lot of growing to do."

"I wanna hold him," she murmured.

Cue the melting of my heart.

"Well, when is all done growing and he decides to come out, Daddy and I will let you hold him."

Her whole face brightened up and she flashed this huge grin. "I can?"

Kids are incredible.

"Yes but you'll have to be very careful."

"Okay," she said, very serious-like.

And then she kissed my belly. Seriously, could she be any sweeter?

While this was a very logical, grown-up conversation, we were reminded later on that she is, indeed, still a very young child with a fuzzy understanding of the situation: the next time we talked about the baby, she informed me very matter-of-factly that it was actually Dora the Explorer in my belly, and that when Dora came out, she was going to play with her.

Oh, to be a kid again.