Mommy's lap is shrinking...

I read a lot of Bearenstein Bears as a kid. Like, tons. I loved that shit. I wanted to eat barbecue honey comb almost as bad as I wanted to eat whatever the hell Doozers were building with. And scooby snacks.

I've possibly always been obsessed with food.

Anyway, one of the things I remember vividly was the movie or episode of the cartoon that involved Mama Bear getting pregnant. The kids noticed when her lap shrunk. Or that was the PC way of saying she'd been knocked up with an accidental third sibling-bear. I don't know.

These days, when S climbs into my arms to be rocked, I think about that a lot. In an absolutely hands-down way, my favorite thing in the world is cuddling that little boy. He's 27-months-old, mouthy, and squirmy, and it's hard not to imagine him instantly morphing into a leggy pointy irritably teenager who won't give mama any baby kisses ever again.

(Yeah, this makes me cry.)

So this time around, I'm less excited about The Belly Growing. Because I'm getting unwieldy and large. It's like Alvin is pushing him away. Sorry suckah, there's a new kid in town? This kind of breaks my heart.

It's a new feeling, too. My mom warned me that Second Baby guilt would occur. I shrugged her off. Not me, mom! I'm just psyched!

I'm psyched. Also, I'm FREAKING OUT.

I rocked S to sleep in my in-laws bed on Sunday afternoon. He asked me to sing to him, and he put his curly head against my collarbone, and he rubbed his back until his long eyelashes fluttered against my skin. And then I held him until I was falling asleep. So I stuck him in the pack n play and watched him sleep for a little while and then passed out to take a nap.

What do I wake up to? Tiny little fingers tickling my toes and S whispering "Hi, Mama," when I open my eyes. He may as well have reached into my stomach Temple-Of-Doom-Style and twisted my ovaries into neat little bows. He's so cute.

All this cute is to his benefit, since it's all that kept me from encouraging strangers to kidnap him as we wandered the hallways on Saturday NOT seeing WALL-E. This was, of course, my bad. We'll chalk that up to temporary sanity loss and try going to the movies again when he's 5 and the Cars sequel finally comes out.