voir la couleur rose

The punkin doesn't start to hear for another month or so, but we're already practicing our prenatal communication. Most nights I read to maman's belly: The Wizard of Oz. (A certain Misesian says that the baby will now grow up to oppose the gold standard.)

I was trying to do different intonations for the different characters, then doing different voices for the most extreme characters -- e.g., a high, squeaky voice for the Queen of the Field Mice -- but The Expectant Father says that when the baby's hearing develops, she* will only be able to hear low pitches. The book also says to speak loudly -- to speak so that someone across the room could hear me clearly. So now I read everything with the Voice of God. It's fun, though dramatically monotonous.

* She? No, it's not that we already know the sex of the baby. We won't know that for another month or so. But because papa's imagination defaults to a little boy and maman's defaults to a little girl, we're trying to challenge ourselves to imagine differently. So she says he and him, and I say she and her.

Mamie (maternal grand-mère, pronounced ma-MIE) says she has so many females in her family that ours is bound to be a girl. My father says he's "seeing pink" since his only issue (yours truly) is male.

I have a friend who's in the family-planning way, and he says he hopes for a girl because girls are easier to get along with.

When people ask me whether I have a sex preference, I say, Yes, but it changes every few days. It's true: this weekend I am, like my dad, seeing pink. Most of the past week, I'd been seeing blue.

- papa