Apparently pregnancy is miserable. I've never been pregnant, but I get all the sympathy symptoms, plus I put on weight. Believe it or not, pregnancy is even harder on my wife. At least that's what she says.

One area where our symptoms diverge is sleeplessness — she wakes up in the middle of the night, while I store up sleep like a bear in hibernation. I know what's coming, you see. A squawking little Woodlief larva, demanding attention every 2-3 hours. And you've got to stay awake when you're changing the little stinker and carrying him to his mother, or else he'll latch on to you and attempt to nurse. I say this from regrettable experience.

So last night the poor wife rolled out of bed at some unholy hour, only to return hours later, as I am rising at my own appointed unholy hour. "Honey," she says meekly.

"Yes?"

"I bought some books." She tells me this because the Amazon account is linked to my email address, and she knows that soon I'll see the wave of purchases. Many of the books she buys are second-hand, primarily because they are out of print (think original McGuffey Readers and, thanks to our friends Ann Stegall and Suzanne Castro-Miller, the entire collection of Elizabeth Goudge). This means that, on a night when she's unable to sleep, and has lots of time to ponder what we need for the boys' library, and what authors' oeuvres she hasn't completely worked her way through yet, a dozen or so confirmation emails from Amazon will make their way to my inbox. This is why she tells me that she bought some books.

"Honey," I whisper sweetly (she is pregnant, after all, and pregnant women are like hippos, in that they are deceptively quick and dangerous, despite their plump cuteness*), "do you think perhaps we could find a late-night hobby for you that costs less money?"

"It's for the children," she declares, borrowing a page from the crowd bent on spending the country into bankruptcy. And who can argue with her, especially in her cute-but-dangerous hippo-like state? So I kiss her and ask her if she is my baby, because last night Isaac disavowed any further babyhood ("You're my sweet baby," I had told him as I swept him up into my arms, to which he replied: "I not a baby." He recanted seconds later, professing that he was in fact my baby, but that's because he wanted a cookie.). She rightly says that she is, and I wish that I could lie beside her and listen to the rain. But instead I have to work, in order to pay for all those books.

In a while the boys will awake, and they will be beside themselves with joy because of the rain, because on rain days they get to watch a movie. After their schoolwork is done they will gather in front of the tube with a bowl of popcorn their mother has made for them, and they will watch "Mary Poppins" or "The Sound of Music," and she will curl up nearby and read one of her used Elizabeth Goudge books. I will be at work, but thinking of them, and of how nice it will be when the day is finished, that I can return to a place called Home, and how blessed I am that the word means so very much to me.

(*Disclaimer: the author would like to stress that the hippo metaphor is not intended to imply that said author's wife is anything but slender and smoking hot, albeit with a round bun in the oven. The author would like to note further that, due to the unfortunate onset of gestational diabetes, said author's wife has been on the equivalent of an Atkin's diet, and is even more smoking hot than normal, which is pretty darn good-looking, as any objective observer will easily admit. The author's wife would like it noted that the author is delusional, and probably sucking up because he's still angling to get himself an obscenely expensive .45-caliber sidearm. The author would like to note in rejoinder that said wife doesn't know from hotness, being a woman who has never truly appreciated her own beauty.) Posted by Woodlief on March 20, 2007 at 08:18 AM