Sneaky

My Mom is just about to land at the airport.  She is coming for a couple of weeks to help out with the new baby...as soon as the new baby comes that is.  Saturday is the day the eviction notice gets served on this kid wiggling inside of me.  Hallelujah, an end is in sight.

Spouse the Kind has taken himself and all the kids except my napping W2O down to the airport to pick my Mom up which has left me completely by myself in my quiet home.  It feels so strange.  It kind of feels like I should be frantically mopping or scrubbing or laundering.  But right now I'm trying to feel good about just sitting.  My Mom has forgiven me of all sorts of things so I'm putting all my money on the fact that she'll forgive me for not having the most sparkling home in all the land when she arrives.

Sitting in this quiet it is quite hard to imagine that I am going to be a mother of five sometime this week.  It's even a bit hard to believe that I'm a mother of four.  These types of things just kind of sneak up on you so you hardly realize them.

It's kind of like how our family has a pet cat.  Last Christmas an orange striped cat appeared on our doorstep.  My kids, like all good kids, have been dying their whole lives for a pet.  When the cat showed himself to be happy on the cushions on our porch bench, they were all giddy beyond giddy.  Every day they would ask to go outside and see Frisbee, as he was quickly named.  They petted him and loved him and asked me daily why they had to have a Mom who is allergic to cats ("Don't let that cat in!" I'd say.  "He'll make me sneeze and cry and itch all over!").  Two weeks after Frisbee came into our lives last year, though, he disappeared.  And then my kids cried even more loudly, "Why do we have to have a Mom who is allergic to cats!" (And I thought, "If I let them believe that my biggest Mom-fault is my allergy to cats, I might have a good thing going here.").

Then this year, the day before Christmas, by Christmas magic I suppose, Frisbee reappeared on our porch.  He showed up just in time to go carolling with us to all of our neighbors' houses.  He pretended for all that is in him, that he was just another member of the clan, bounding down the street with us and going up porch steps.  I figured he would be gone by New Years.  But he has stayed.  Not only has he stayed, but he has slid his tail around our lives.  If one of the kids spots him on the porch a cry of, "It's Frisbee!" is begun and picked up by every other child in the house including W2O who says, "Fizbee, Fizbee!" while she demonically plots pulling on his tail.  They all run out the door shoeless and pet him and crawl behind the bushes with him and love him until I make them come inside.  The cat will stand on two feet and splay his body across our front window after I open the shades in the morning.  He will occasionally tramp to the back yard, climb up on our grill, and watch us through the kitchen window while we eat.  And always he waits patiently in our bushes in case the kids might come out and pet him and chase him and hug him and make him feel like the most loved cat that ever existed upon God's green earth.

I was never going to have a cat.  I'm allergic.  But we have a cat now.  And I love him because he makes my kids happy.  These things sneak up on you.

It seems strange to think that in a few days I will be in love with a little boy that I will never have seen before the moment he is put in my arms.  It is strange to think that there is a little body just a few days away whose happiness will be more important than mine.  It is so strange that I will be a mother of five.  These things just sneak up on you.

But isn't it beautiful? 

Life is good.