Sisters

When I was pregnant the question I was asked most often, aside from, "When are you due?" and "Can I rub your belly?", was, "What do the girls think about this?" People always asked this question with an underlying tone insinuating doom. I think this was in part because the girls were eleven and thirteen years old, and that is not the most easygoing age to say the least. But I always found this unsettling and, well, strange. After all, from the moment I told the girls I was pregnant they were ecstatic. They were the ones dragging me to ogle over tiny baby clothes and test out all the annoying baby gadgets. And, every time either of them had extra money, they would go buy something for "the baby." As sweet as this was, I always told them they didn't have to keep buying her things...but they wanted too! And I remember from the time I could actually feel her move, we had a nightly ritual of laying on the bed, huge pregnant belly exposed, just waiting for a kick. The further along I got though, the cute little kicks turned into those huge rolls where you can practically make out body parts...that they found a little disturbing. Some time later on I was talking to a coworker who explained that when she told her teenage daughter she was expecting, she never heard the end of comments like, "Oh, great, a baby is going to be so annoying!" "Why did you have to get pregnant now?" So, I began to worry that all the new would wear off. Probably about the time we brought her home and she serenaded us with the ear piercing cry of a newborn. Or, maybe it would be the first time she spit up all over them or they had to change yet another diaper. But, almost seven months later, the new still hasn't worn off...much to the contrary. They still fight over her and insist the other has "had her longer." Claire definitely has no shortage of people to love her...and more importantly, to fix her hair (Click on the pictures and look closely at the hairdo, courtesy of Lauren)!