Cuter

Possible superhero name: the Pantsless Wonder.

This afternoon I was chatting with Lyla about her brother.

"Did you know that I'm going to be [son's name]'s dada?"

"[Son's name]'s dada."

"Yes. I'll be your dada and I'll be [son's name]'s dada."

"Yeah."

"And Mama will be [son's name]'s mama and Lyla's mama, too."

"Lyla's mama, too." She squirmed in my lap until her head rested in the crook of my left arm and her feet rested in the crook of my right.

"[Son's name] will be a teeny-tiny baby, but you can still be my baby, too."

"Ha ha! I'm baby, too!"

"[Son's name] will be cute, but you'll be way cuter."

"Yeah."

Whoops, that was a dad foul. You're not supposed to tell your daughter that she's cuter than her unborn brother. You love them equally, you think they're equally cute, and all that. Right?

Right?

See, I don't feel that way at all right now. I haven't even met this new kid, so how am I supposed to know what to feel about him? Pregnant ladies have all those hormones swirling around that fuse their emotions to the fetus. As a dad, though, my prevailing feelings toward this kid are that I'm curious to meet him, and I'm a little upset with him for making his mother so unwieldy.

Oh, it'll change the instant he splashes out of his mother. Then he'll be my son and my heart will open and swallow him up forever. But tonight when Julie kicks me out of bed because the only way she can sleep is with legs perpendicular to torso, like a 90-degree angle with her stomach as the arc, I'll feel justified in saying that Lyla is much, much cuter than her fetus-brother.