Girls girls girls.

When we first announced that we were expecting our fourth baby, more often than not, before we heard "How exciting!" or "Congratulations!" or even "Four kids? Are you crazy?", we were met with an overwhelming, "Well, maybe you'll finally get a boy this time!".  Yes.  We figured we'd hear this - I mean, three girls is more than the average female count in any typical family, but what we didn't figure, myself and my husband, was how annoying it would be.  It was as if people were assuming we were disappointed that we hadn't "gotten" a boy out of our previous pregnancies.  As well intentioned as it was, it came across like a fourth girl would be a waste of a perfectly good opportunity to have a boy.  As a family friend who also mothers a gaggle of girls put it, "This isn't China, people.  We get to keep the girls."  Now, don't get me wrong, a boy would be great!  We know lots of sweet and wonderful and delightful boys, and we don't have one of those, so it would be new and exciting, and bless him, the poor thing would be loved and smothered and harassed by the sisters for all of his days...but, we like our girls.  A lot.  And more would be just lovely.  When the time came for the 18 week ultrasound, we were excited to see our sweet baby, but equally excited to be able to just tell people we were having a boy or girl and get them to quit crossing their fingers for our luck to change.  I'll be honest - we knew it was a girl before we even went to the ultrasound.  We just knew.  Neither of us could really picture the baby any other way, so when a picture of two little legs and nothing extra was printed off, it was not really a surprise to us.  It was almost a relief, like, we got this, we can do girls, we are pretty good at girls, we know what to do with one of those.  There was a tiny moment of pause as we let go of any musings about a little brother, but definitely not any disappointment.  Fortunately, people in our family loved us enough to keep any "aw, nuts" to themselves when we shared to results, and I think for the most part, everyone is over it.  Of course we're having another girl, what else?  The girls we have were jazzed about a tiny new sister, and I think a baby sister will be less likely to be tortured than a brother would - sisters are old news, eh.  And while it is a little irksome to have strangers weigh in (now that I'm obviously pregnant and not just heavy handed in the cookie jar) on how a house full of girls will surely make us poor and crazy, or how many people have had to get through several girls before they finally got a boy, it is easy to shrug it off, because I know the truth, and so did one other elderly gal at the store - she told me, "I had boys and I had girls, and I'll tell you something, boys are nothing but trouble.  Girls are perfect."  Amen, sister.