The baby

I know we've been calling Eva "the baby" for 9 months... but now that she is almost here... i look at Wes and think that maybe i "dethroned" him too soon. Curt has been getting up early with Wes for the past couple months so that I can get an extra half an hour of sleep but this morning was different. Curt had been out until almost 1 am picking up a friend of ours at the airport and was so tired. I rolled out of bed and bundled Wes into my arms, heading to the kitchen. He was cranky...and the house was full of sleeping people.
"Do you want toast?"
"no"
"yogurt?"
"no"
"Want to go in the hot tub?"
"no"
...and then i remembered the other day how Curt had taken him riding horse and Wes couldn't quit talking about "baby horse".
"Do you want to go quading out in the field to see the baby horse?"
"UP!!!! (yup) SHOES!! 'mon!! (come on!) 'mon!!" I downed the last of my breakfast and we headed out. The air was cool and the quad was covered in wet from the night so I wiped off the seat and plopped Wes in front of my solid baby belly and headed out. The fields looked empty. I guess even the animals wanted to sleep in this morning. We drove past the garden and the stallion's pen and Wes jabbered away, pointing at the sunflowers, and "Nitro". We pulled up to the shed and a handful of bunnies skittered underneath. (Curt released a few 3 years ago and they thrived....and multiplied). After opening and closing gates, we drove into the field. One goat sauntered out of the shed, then 3 pigs, then the dog. Wes was in his glory waking up the world. We drove around the west fence until suddenly Wes started pointing and hooting. "Horse! Horse!!" He had spotted the group of horses on the eastern fence line. We drove over there and they took off running. "Ohhhhhh! Fast Fast!" We spent the next 10 minutes just puttering around in the middle of the horses. Wes jabbered non-sensically when one horse nibbled on the fence and grass and made big chewing actions to mimic her. Then the baby horses tried nursing and he said "Awwwe! Baby." And then, of course, a horse having a bowel movement is a *thing to behold* for a child and the vocabulary words are, of course, the favourites: "POOOP!! BUM! BUM!" On our way back to the house, we saw the cat and her batch of kittens so had to stop for that too. "Down!" I let him down and turned off the quad. He marched right up to the mama cat, cupped her face in his tiny baby hands and kissed her full on the lips. (Do cats have lips?) She closed her eyes, stretched and strangely seemed to enjoy it. Then he picked up a kitten and asked "home?" No, we couldn't bring the kitten home. "Tay, Bye!" He put the kitten back with it's mother and marched back to the quad. His mood had improved greatly in the time we had been outside. So much about him is still so little, but i see shades of my big boy Darren... and big sweeping brush strokes in him resembling my husband. The baby is becoming a boy.