Pow-Pow-Pow

This photo is not of my neice, it's some baby off the internet. My neice is apparently not this calm in the womb, as her mother, my sister, has begun describing her antics as "pow-pow-powing."

She kicks and punches all at once. She does this at appropriate times, such as during Christmas mass while everyone singing "Gloria in Excelsis Deo" or whatever that song is named. (Oddly, she didn't dig any other song, remaining relatively chill throughout the rest of mass.) She also kicks and punches at inappropriate times, like when my poor sister gets up in the middle of the night to pee and the little one is like "ooh, cool! time to get up!" and then she has to relax so fully back in bed to trick the baby into going back to sleep.

She also has a move called "the wave" wherein she puts a hand (or foot or head, we don't really know) pushed up against the front of my sister's belly and then she drags it along, pushing out all the while.

One morning this past weekend, I was lying in the stupid twin bed in my mother's guest room and my sister snuck in and climbed in with me. "Feel now," she said. "She's kicking a lot." So I lay there for 20 minutes or so with my hand on my sister's bare belly and felt my neice going crazy. I got to name yet another move, which I dubbed "Pilates" where she stretches way out and part of her just sticks straight out making a bump on my sister's bump! So after she finishes her aerobic routine (pow-pow-pow!) she flows right into pilates. Quite the energetic baby we got here.

I think that this baby is already brilliant and is having these thoughts: "Wait a minute. I keep getting bigger, and this place seems pretty small. That means that soon I'm gonna be really squished in here. I better really stretch out and push around while I can!" Thus all the craziness.

In other baby news, she has a name and she hates beef. Everytime my sister eats it, she is very sick and full of gas for hours afterwards. So she's off the red meat for a while. On Christmas Eve, after getting all swollen in church, we realized she hadn't drunk any water all day. The baby apparently needs water or she gets her revenge by making my sister swell up.

My almost-sister-in-law showed up with a gift for "Baby Chili" a nickname derived from my sister's husband's last name. Hilarious and while I'm not sure it will stick, we appreciate the creativity required to have come up with it.

At only 23 weeks, with 17 left to go, my sister's belly button is almost gone and she is starting to look really pregnant, which is super exciting. She is struggling with the weight gain, having never gained more than a couple of pounds ever in her life before (unlike me, who could probably carry a baby and not even notice the weight gain since I've been so up and down my whole life!). From the back, she doesn't look pregnant at all, which is an amazing skinny-woman-ninja-trick that makes me jealous.

Although my sister, her husband, their Pomeranian, cat, 4 cars and my unborn neice are moving to Texas this week, I will see her again in late January and in February too. And I'm going there in March before she's born and again in early May after she's here. So I won't miss too much of this amazing first pregnancy in my family. Thank god. I'm not sure I could deal if I missed this. It's amazing and beautiful and a little bit weird that my neice is growing inside my sister.

Only 17 weeks till I get to meet her and then do what all good aunts do -- feed her cookies, take her on adventures, and listen when she bitches about her mom. I can't wait!