A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Parenthood

At this point I was only 8 weeks pregnant with my firstborn. I was a little apprehensive about making any kind of announcement until the doctors had confirmed it. My first pregnancy, as I mentioned before, ended in a miscarriage at 7 weeks gestation. In March of 2010, my midwife told me that at 8 weeks it was highly unlikely I was going to miscarry, that the risk was only 5%. She said we were in the clear. So I told the whole world, minus the few family members I actually called and texted first, via a Facebook status update.

Apart from the 22 obvious comments congratulating me on this momentous occasion, I was bombarded with various other cheerful praises through e-mails and text messages and phone calls and posts on my wall. That very same day I also received an extremely interesting and pleasantly surprising Facebook message from my good friend Matt, my old pal from third grade on until high school.

I mentioned before that the expected due date for my firstborn was October 27th, right? Right. That's what I told everybody in the comments section of my FB announcement that day. I was already giddy and overjoyed and excited. And then Matt came in and multiplied my level of insane glee a million fold! One of my best friends in the whole wide world was having a baby at the same time! How cool is that!?

The interesting thing about this is that Matt and I had kind of fallen out of touch for several years. In grade school and high school, we were inseparable. We kept our desks next to each other in 4th grade and linked our Gameboys to play Tetris battles with the sound off during lessons. We passed notebooks off to each other in the hallways between classes in high school, taking turns writing a massive story with our other two friends Amanda and Adam. On weekends he would ride his bike across town, two or three miles I think, from his house to mine so we could go hiking in the woods at the back of my allotment with Adam.

Then graduation happened. We both tried college for a bit. I didn't have quite as much luck with continuing my education as he did, though it took him longer than he might have liked. We shared an apartment together, separate bedrooms, and I feel like I owe him a tremendous backlog of rent from that time still to this day. I'm not sure if that's a factor into the hows, whys, and wherefores that we lost contact with each other, but that's not important.

He was one of the first people to find out about Magic: The Gathering. We played with decks he had constructed late at night at Perkins, drinking coffee, cocoa, and smoking cigarettes. When it was still okay to smoke in restaurants.

He introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons before Wizards of the Coast bought it off of TSR. We played 2nd Edition. I still insist 2nd Edition is better than any revisions WotC has ever made. I think they ruined D&D, but that's another matter. We segued into D&D from a board game he had found called Hero's Quest. Our mutual love for fantasy stemmed for a shared obsession with a series of books co-written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman known as The Death Gate Cycle, which we both agree is so much better than their more popular and better known Dragonlance Saga.

I think we lost touch mostly after I got married. Times were hard for Jamie and I. We bounced around jobs for the longest time at the start of our marriage. We saw less and less of Matt. Until seven years later when fate decided that we were both going to be first time parents around the exact same time. We did not plan this at all. I didn't even know he had a girlfriend!

"Uncle" Matt meets Lilah Jayne, whose future best friend is
still gestating in her Mommy's belly inches away.

Much to Matt's surprise, I think, his wife and I became pretty good friends. I remember him telling me, "Oh, you guys have nothing in common," as if he expected me to hate her and she hate me and us to never get along. I don't know what kind of crack he was smoking. Stacy and I get along great. She might not be a video gamer like me. She might not be into D&D like me. She might not be quite as nerdy as me, but we have found common interests to share, such as atheism and craftiness and being moms. Stacy has her own blog, if you're interested. You should be, because it's really all her fault I'm here today writing my own. Hi, Stacy!

Exactly one month and one day after Your Future Overlord came into this world, her best friend Addison was born. I say "best friend" with my fingers crossed, hoping beyond hope that this stays the case until the end of time. But nobody knows what the future may hold. We don't exactly live next door to each other. Who knows what will happen when (and if - we'll talk about that later) the girls start going to school?

First official play date at 7 & 6 months respectively.

So far, everything is going according to plan. Our girls are now both 3 years and some odd months old. They talk. They giggle. They get so excited whenever we tell them that they get to see each other for play dates. They cry when they have to say their good-byes. They even wear the same Halloween costumes sometimes:

October 13, 2012 - Boo at the Zoo

That was yet another incident that was entirely unplanned, by the way. It just so happened that Addison was obsessed with farm animals that year, and Lilah picked out the cow costume (the exact same one) at the Good Will store. People probably thought they were twins, but ever since they were babies we got people asking if they were because they looked so much alike!

They don't look quite so much alike now as they did then. Addison grew a hand span of inches taller than Lilah. Their faces started taking on more distinct and individual attributes. But one thing has not changed. Much to my continuing glee, they presently remain the best of friends.

August 24, 2013.