Month Seven: December

“Hey. Cut it out.”

Raising my head from a deep sleep, I looked past the back of Chip’s head to the nightstand, barely able to make out the time through my blurred vision. Two a.m. “Are you talking to me?” I mumbled.

“Yeah. Stop thumping me.”

I rubbed my eyes. “I’m not thumping you.”

“Yeah you are.”

“Chip, I was sound asleep.”

“Well, you’re thrashing me while you’re doing it.”

As I put my head back down on the pillow and spooned up to him again, Chip sat straight up and looked at me, jabbing a finger in my direction. “That! That right there. That’s what I’m talking about.”

I know the look on my face told him in no uncertain terms he was crazy. “I didn’t do anything.”

“Well then, who did?”

Somewhere between my grogginess wearing off and my ire rising, I felt a kick to my inner abdominal wall. I began to laugh.

Chip clearly thought I was nuts. “What’s so funny?”

I sat up, took his hand, and placed his palm firmly against the taut skin of my stomach. Sure enough, within seconds, our future soccer star gave her daddy’s hand a good, hard whack.

Chip’s face took on that same look of wonder and awe that he’d gotten the first time he felt the baby move. “That wasn’t you, after all, was it?”

“Told you.”

He hunkered down with his mouth next to my stomach. “Hey, sweetheart! This is your daddy. I know you want to play—”

The baby kicked in acknowledgment.

“Hey, that’s really good, but Daddy needs his sleep. And Mommy needs her sleep, too. So cut that out, okay?”

Violent flailing from my womb.

“Well, Chip,” I teased, “maybe she's not as obedient as we first thought.”

He rolled over, yanking a good portion of the comforter with him. “Just like her mother.”