The Taste of Crow

About four minutes after T was born, people started asking us if we were going to "try again" for a girl. "Heavens, no," we'd reply. "We are finished." Even at that point, with hospital staff on hand to help ease some of the burden of a newborn, I was already overwhelmed with two kids. And, not for nothing, I have a cousin with six boys, and I'm sure every one from the third on seemed destined to be a girl. Neither Phil nor I had any intentions of being outnumbered.

To drive the point home, I unloaded all of my maternity clothes, gave away T's clothes and toys up to his current age, and started listening to Justin Timberlake. My maternal years were behind me as I was watching my thirties whipping by.

Other than M's fashion sense, the perfect family. Two kids. Just as we'd always planned.

A week or so after my Milestone Birthday, a co-worker confided that she was pregnant. And the wheels started turning. Maybe my dizziness and vertigo wasn't a sign that I'd be dying any moment of high blood pressure. Maybe my crankiness with Phil wasn't because he had suddenly become impossible to be around. Maybe falling asleep every night as I was putting M to bed wasn't just an inevitable curse of aging and oncoming uncontrollable narcolepsy.

Maybe not. In fact, Heavens-No-We-Are-Finished Kitchel will be making an appearance around mid-March.

So if the entries in the last several months have been a bit sparse and the writing has been a bit light on food content -- one might say intentionally avoiding writing much about food -- forgive me. Know that I was either konked out or sparing you any rhapsodizing about the foods I was enjoying, namely boxed mashed potatoes and Co-Co Wheats.

Bear with me. The food will be coming back. With a vengeance.