Something Has Changed

It seems like it has happened overnight. The belly has popped, the eating has increased, the IQ is dropping, and the waddling is starting.

I just noticed yesterday that my wife is changing. This is different from gaining ten pounds and not noticing until you look at a recent picture and you resemble Free Willy the Orca. This is more like reading a really good novel and then the first twist comes in the story and you are surprisingly shocked. Here is how it happened.

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday to look at some aches & pains in my heels & knees. Liz came along to be with me and enjoy the afternoon. She wore a t-shirt and workout pants and I could tell that she was pregnant- really pregnant. It wasn't until after the doctor's appointment (around 4pm) that Liz said she was hungry for dinner- at 4pm! I explained that lunch was four hours ago and snack time was just two hours ago. She wasn't having any of it, and blamed it on the baby. I acquiesced and took her to a "classy" burger joint called Del Rodeo. We had dinner with the blue-hairs and began our conversation.

Our conversation usually flows agreeably with rhythm, but today Liz could barely put two sentences together without first thinking through all the nouns and verbs that she knew. It was like talking to a second language learner who is in 2nd grade. I told Liz to relax, take her time, and think through her thoughts before speaking. We both cracked up laughing and I made an IQ joke. She didn't get it for about five minutes and then she playfully hit me.

It was time to head home, after our "dinner" and conversation. We took the Transmilenio, Bogota's light-rail, home. It was here that Liz waddled over to an open window and placed her hands on the window sill and put her head out of the window. She then remarked about the cars, people, and pretty dogs that she saw along the way. She did this the entire way home. I tried not to notice how similar it was to the Golden Retriever in the car a lane over from our transportation. Liz just smiled and breathed the air.

We made it home after waddling a few more blocks, where we enjoyed another snack of hot chocolate and sliced carrots. Think about that combo for a second. Don't ask, because I don't know why. Anyway, we enjoyed our night of registering for baby items online, talking with new moms on the phone, an hour of TV, and then to bed.

It was in bed, where I started joking with her about the afternoon. We were laughing very hard. So hard that Liz started cramping and then crying it hurt her so badly, she swore she was going into early labor. And then I vowed never to joke again, in which she replied she was okay, but hungry and needed to go to the bathroom. She then went to have a snack.

I somehow fell asleep bewildered and bemused.

It is funny how a man can go to bed one night with an intelligent, skinny, athletic, Type-A woman, and wake up the next morning with a gaseous, moody, waddling pregnant woman and somehow it is still all my fault. She is changing, and I love her. And I, I am trying to go with the flow.