The Day That Flamingos and Urine Changed My Life

In order to clear up a few basic questions you may have, I can simply tell you that my wife Jan is on a perpetual quest to find a t-shirt that reads as follows:

YES, I'm pregnant.

YES, it was planned.

APRIL 26th.

NO, you may not touch.

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Given that we are now 6 months pregnant, the first few posts will be retrospective in order to bring everyone up to date with some entertaining stories from trimesters 1 and 2.  So now, Sherman, set the WABAC Machine to August 2013...

We probably don't need to go ALL the way back to the beginning; I'm assuming I can skip this part:

 

(Mobile viewers, click HERE to view embedded video)

Jan is many things:  beautiful, intelligent, a fantastic baker, and an amazing partner.  One thing she is not, though, is a secret keeper.  On a weeknight after a day at work, I returned home and, with relative ease, was able to convince my wife that we should skip cooking at home and instead venture out to our favorite Pho restaurant.  Being a hot August day, while she used the bathroom I decided to change out of my now sweaty, post-public-transit-commute clothes.

As I mentioned, this child was not without careful consultation and planning.  A week prior to this incident, I had actually begged my wife to invest in cheaper home pregnancy tests, as I feared we would be bankrupted by urine at the rate which she was nervously going through them.  Unbeknownst to me (although perhaps suspected, given that she was in the bathroom for exactly 2 minutes), as I changed my clothing, she was having a staring contest with an immunoassay strip upon which she had micturated.  She had, as she later revealed to me, planned to romanticize the moment by gliding forth from the bathroom on gossamer wings, backlit by a heavenly glow and propelled by cooing doves; she then intended to indulge my love of clothing humor by presenting me with an ironic t-shirt reading "I [heart] my pregnant wife".
 

Camden and Jan, after the proudest pee of her life.

In her peaking excitement, though, her best-laid plans went right out the window.  She burst out of the bathroom door and leapt across the hallway into our bedroom with the forward momentum of an Olympic triple-jumper.  She found me largely disrobed from the waist down, mid-clothing change; I was "flamingoing" my way into a new pair of underpants (one foot down, one foot up) when she barreled towards me, shrieking, "ARRGFHGRHFGHF!!!!!" (which apparently translates loosely to, "My dearest?  We are now with child,") and threw a large piece of cloth into my face, temporarily obscuring my vision and almost upending me.  The dog, alerted to the disturbance of peace, sped into the room, dove between the two of us, and howled with excitement.

After covering myself and regaining my balance, I was able to unfurl the shirt, and we both collapsed into each other's arms, squealing and crying (um, totally her) with glee.

A good scientist always quadruple-checks their work... 

then does a Wolverine impression.

Those who have lived through these types of situations can tell you that in an instant, your entire perspective on life changes.  In the blink of an eye, priorities are realigned, and emotions swirl.  Did Jan get the pregnancy reveal that she had concocted?  Unless she actually dreamed of screaming incoherently at her temporarily blinded and half-naked husband, no.  You know what, though?  It was better.  It was a memory that we'll never forget, and it was the "less than perfect but fantastically hilarious" situation that is most of our life.