The wonderful truth and the awful truth

The wonderful truth?

IT'S A BOY!!!

We found out Friday, and we were both so surprised! And I'm serious - if having a boy means being as sick as I was, I sure hope God blesses me with more GIRLS! I'm kidding... I'm excited to meet this brand new little boy and hope that someday he can have a brother. But for now, we'll take them one at a time...

I am a little nervous though. I'm a GIRL mom! I'm really good at ribbons and bows and dresses and dolls. I come from a family of girls and I don't know how to do boys. I asked Gary how I'm supposed to change his diaper - do I bend "it" up or down? He looked at me like I was nuts, but I'm still not sure if he knows the answer himself. :) I've got a lot to learn and honestly, I'm totally up for the challenge. This is going to be FUN! I did get a little emotional though... it suddenly occurred to me that I just might not have any more girls. That the last time Addie wears that one really cute dress, might be THE last time I dress one of my girls in it. Ever. I think I've moved past that though, because I have great things not far ahead. He's going to fit in so well with his rough-and-tumble sisters. Emma will LOVE having a buddy to search for bugs with, and Addie will love having another someone to put up with her "tackling" (although, I think she thinks they're "hugs").

Emma was so excited when we told her. She said, "I'm so so so excited for my new baby brother!" and she's quick to share with people that it's a BOY baby. She's still set on "Washcloth" for his name though, so we'll have to give it some serious consideration.

Now for the awful truth...

(and no, thankfully it's not baby-related, praise God!)

As we were waiting to be called in for our ultrasound on Friday, a very obese woman walked by us. As Emma watched her walk by, she said, "She's a big, fat girl!" Gary and I were mortified. We were quick to call her over and shush her before she repeated it. I'm not sure that the woman heard - if she did, she disregarded the comment completely, but Emma did say it somewhat quietly. Regardless, it was totally inappropriate and Gary and I were just stunned that she'd say something like that. We reprimanded her immediately and told her never to say something like that again and explained why.

The thing is, I honestly believe Emma didn't know it was wrong. I think she was just observing and stating a fact. And it sounds horrible, but well, she was right. The woman was very overweight. Maybe dangerously overweight. Of course, adults would never dream of just stating the obvious, but Emma is three. I don't think she even thought of it as malicious or judgmental or was intended to hurt anyone's feelings. Until we told her that saying that someone is fat is wrong, I'm don't think she saw anything wrong with it. So here's my struggle - by our saying something, have we opened her eyes to the fact that overweight people are well, overweight and that it's not to be discussed? We tried to explain that it might have hurt that lady's feelings, and Emma said, "Well, but she was!" She's right. We just told her that it's not nice to talk about how people look, and that God made us all perfectly. Emma has never said anything about different races, and I was half expecting it to come up, but I think before our little talk she saw everyone as equal (as everyone IS!). By making certain traits "off-limits" I really hope we haven't opened her eyes to people being different.

My thoughts are all jumbled, so I'm not explaining myself well, but I've been thinking about it since it happened. I just want her to stay innocent, loving all people no matter what. She's really good about that so far. It's one thing I love about Emma - she thinks ANYONE can be her friend. She's very compassionate when she sees someone who is hurt or lonely or sick. Just last week we visited Gary's aunt in a nursing home, and while Auntie Annie lay there on her bed sleeping and struggling to breathe, Emma just rubbed and patted her arm and quietly said hi to her. She even kissed her before we left. I love that she wasn't scared, and saw that Annie just needed a little love. Adults aren't always willing to look past the pain and suffering, so I was very, very proud of her.

So that's the awful truth. Emma said it out loud, which forced us to explore it further. Would it have been better to ignore her comment or just to acknowledge that she was right? It didn't make sense to do anything but tell her not to repeat that - ever - and I think it sunk in enough that she won't. I hope.