Monica

Our princess is with child. Or, anyway, she thinks she is. "My baby is coming out today," she says. Initially dubbed "Harmonica," her unborn child's name has been shortened to "Monica." The "pregnancy" has been going on for nearly three weeks, and seems to have sprung from spending time with a friend whose mommy was pregnant.

Noting that the friend's mom had evidently decided to become with child, Annalee decided that she, too, would make such a decision. And she has been resolute, never drifting from the reality that there is a special someone inside her. "Monica likes chocolate," she has mentioned, more than once.

She has also been resolute in the decision to refer to Kim and me as "Sister" and "Brother" for nigh on six weeks. It is not impossible that she wants to have a new sibling. One would especially think so, given that she sometimes refers to "Monica," too, as "Sister." For instance, I have heard her say, "Sister is going to come today," not quite looking at her belly, but somehow gesturing toward her "oven" with her entire being, without actually moving a muscle.

On the other hand, Annalee may call Kim and me "Sister" and "Brother" just because she likes it and had tired, temporarily one imagines, of the top-down power structure of parents, named as such. By a striking coincidence, my own parents had me refer to them by their first names, Read and Jenny, until I was ten. It was a hippie, California-in-the-sixties, power-to-the-children sort of thing. Until everyone pretty much longed for the words "mom" and "dad," which, eventually we did.

And which, today, I pretty much do again.