A Baby in Your Tummy

I went to a baby shower for my cute niece today.  I took little Angel, because baby showers are a girl thing.  She had lots of questions about babies in tummies, and if you could open up the tummy, and girls turning into mommies.  I like answering innocent questions.

After we got home, she looked at my midsection, stretched from seven pregnancies, and sweetly asked, "Mommy?  Do you have a baby in your tummy?"  No dear.  I just have an absence of abdominal muscles, and everything just knows how to pooch out if I'm not sucking it in.  And you helped do this to me.  Oh wait, I just thought all that.  I really only laughed and said, "No, I don't have a baby in my tummy."

"Well," she announced, rubbing her tummy vigorously, "I do!  I'm a mommy now, too!"  She walked around for a while in this exaggerated way, back swayed, tummy pushed out, and her hands protectively caressing the bulge.  She really looked the part!

So here is our Ode to Motherhood: a Pictorial Representation of Passing the Maternal Love From Generation to Generation.

Stage One: protecting the new life

Stage Two: loving the heck out of our babies - whether they want us to or not.  I think the green foam rollers add another realistic touch of nostalgic motherhood, don't you?

And just for fun, here is a totally candid posing of how ladies get to the state depicted in the first photo.  (Isn't it interesting that what is, at three years old, an innocently grouchy attitude can be looked at as something entirely different if she were older?)