Estrogen Overload

Saturday brought more showers to the DFW metroplex. Rain showers, yes, maybe even some torrential downpours, but also another bridal shower. 

I can always count on AG to comment on how my boobs look if I'm wearing anything other than a nun's robe . I wore a more low cut dress than normally would on Saturday night, attending a 100% female bridal shower and dinner for AG, and I was not there five minutes before (wait for it):

 

"Your girls look good, I like that dress!" If she was a guy, that would have been offensive and sleazy, but coming from AG, I'm familiar with it as a compliment. 

Also a compliment when there are five pregnant women in the room. 

That's right- when the sea of gifts and umbrellas and the line of women signing the guest book parted, I saw my friends SG and EL and confirmed with my own eyes that they are going to be baby mamas in only a few months. 

Looking at SG, who is due in June to have a boy, I was halfway thinking she just had a balloon under her black empire-waist dress. My friend EL, who is expecting a girl, is barely showing yet, but her bump was there too, plain as day. 

Five pregnant 20-something women in the same room as four generations of women, including one adorable two-year-old, complete with a sparkly headband. I was sitting in front of a bowl of green and pink Jelly Belly's on the couch, which she had been eyeing while circling the coffee table, and when I asked if she wanted to sit with me, she climbed into my lap like she'd known me forever. She would talk and talk and occasionally hop off my lap to grab another jelly bean, much to the disapproval of her mother. 

 

The house was completely decked out for the party and there were framed pictures of AG and her fiance everywhere. While roaming the downstairs with a margarita in hand, I noticed the juxtaposition of two photos which happened to be the same place where a basket of tortilla chips was located. One was of AG as a young child carrying her lunch box, bow in hair on her first day of pre-school or kindergarten, next to a picture of her fiance, a West Point grad, in his Army fatigues, smiling with a helmet on and carrying huge rifle. I thought it was funny, at least. 

 

While AG was opening her gifts, I was sitting on the floor in front of her and the two-year-old would come by and show me a card, take my name tag, and then started helping with the gifts. AG was sitting by the fireplace, and when the little one figured out that AG was the one with the captive audience, she climbed up onto the fireplace and started singing Mary Had a Little Lamb while twirling with her arms out. She knew literally every verse.

Spending an evening with pregnant friends and seeing a girl, not much older than us, chasing around her toddler, I know I can only speak for myself when I say that there's a mixed emotion there. On the one hand, living my current existence of me-work-me-family-me-friends-various hobbies-me, I can't imagine having a child right now. On the other hand, your maternal instinct kicks in, you see a precious little girl who looks undoubtedly like her mother, and you think "yep, I want one." 

Eventually...

"Look at my child, at the shine of her flyaway curls and the butterfly flight of her smile... I have known her for two years. But if you took every memory, every moment, if you stretched them end to end- they'd reach forever."

-Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper