AUTHOR: M. DATE: 10:33:00 AM ----- BODY:

No really, I think it's true. I spent the weekend in Philadelphia with J., who is one of my all-time favorite people. She and her husband moved there a handful of months ago and are now 7 weeks, give or take, from having their first baby, so I got my butt down there this weekend to help them warm up their new place and see the belly bulge on the single most buff non-body-builder woman I have ever known. She's been complaining every time I asked her how she is that she's "big and slow," so I didn't know what to expect. But she picked me up and there she was, beautiful and buff as ever, only with a cute belly. And Saturday we walked six miles on concrete and guess which one of us was complaining about her back hurting? We spent the whole weekend walking and talking and eating, which, as far as I'm concerned, is more or less the definition of a perfect weekend. We talked about babies and parenthood and relationships and moms and friends and community. I'm so glad she's in Philadelphia now, which is about 600 miles closer than where she was before, but I really wish she was closer. She really is family, and it just seems ridiculous that we can't be cup-of-sugar close. Sunday we spent the afternoon with L., a mutual friend and another of my favorite people, who also happens to be the rabbi that married me and Isadora. She and her husband are talking about trying to get pregnant sometime reasonably soon. What a baby boom in our circle of friends - it really started in earnest only a year or so ago but it's suddenly everywhere. L. and I met right after we graduated from college, and J. and I have known each other a few years longer. It's been so much fun to grow up together and see our lives on such similar paths, even as we've pursued very different things in different places. And I love that we're all talking babies now (ad nauseam). But sitting across the table from these two women who I adore, I couldn't help feeling a little sad about our lack of a due date. It's not that I wish we had tried to get pregnant - this decision still feels like the right one. And it's not about feeling left out of the experience, since I really appreciate this preparation, and my friends are 100% as excited about my adopted baby-to-be as they would be about a baby I was growing. Even so, it's hard not to wonder when my baby will be here. Will I pass my hand-me-downs on to L.? Or will I be getting hand-me-downs from her second baby? What an enormous unknown. And also what fun. Ask me again in five minutes which I think it is.

--------