Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

You know, with family members you really think you know them. While growing up, they're the one constant in your life: as everything else changes, and keeps changing, they're always there, and always there for you. It's like you know them better than you know anyone else.

Then they go and get pregnant.

Laura and I started off doing everything more or less a year apart, since she's more or less exactly one year older than me. Birth, kindergarten, SATs, college, and, uh, from there it kind of dropped off. Someone had to go get married, a lifestyle choice I have yet to match (he has a blog? and he's unmarried?), and now this.

Actually, all told it's not much of a surprise. Avid readers of Laura's blog will know that she'd been trying for some time, plus, you know, there is the four-year-marriage thing. So yesterday when I got a call at 9:10am and discovered it was my sister, I had a sneaking suspicion what it would be about, since no one calls me at 9:10am, much less my sister. So as the voicemail kicked in, I thought to myself, "well, she wouldn't announce this on an answering machine message, so let's see if she just tells me to call her back. Also if she's in a wicked good mood." Sure enough, she came through on both counts. And sure enough, my sister is pregnant.

Fortunately, trying to get pregnant is, like finding a job, one of those trying life endeavors with a really sudden payoff. And, unlike finding a job, pregnancy offers another payoff 9-10 months later when Laura goes through the most painful experience possible in existence. Congratulations to Laura and Peter both, and here's to a happy, healthy mommy and baby. (P.S. This is still weird. My sister is NOT a "mommy." That, you'll note, is mommy's job. Am I right, people?)

Anyway, not that this is relevant, but Laura notes at the end of her post on pregnancy that the plural of vagina is vaginae. Look, she brought it up, not me. Anyway, this is true because vagina is a Latin word meaning, you know, the obvious, plus it's also a semi-obscure word for "sheath," as in, what you put your sword into. And sure enough, a semi-obscure word for "sword" is everyone's favorite word, penis. Aren't you glad you're familiar with Latin declensions?