Number 2

When you become a parent, you talk a lot about Number 2. As in, "Did you go poo poo?" "I smell poo poo" and "Don't put your hands in the poo poo!"

This time, however, I'm not talking about poop. This time I'm talking about a child. Yes, for those of you who didn't see my big announcement on Facebook (where have you been?), we're going for No. 2. I'm about 13 weeks along, due on June 6th. And...it's a girl.

As my friend, Nancy, said when I told her, "Congratulations! You're officially insane." And as other people have said when I told them, "One of each! How perfect!"

It is both. Perfect and insane.

Insane because we can barely keep track of the one we already have and parenting is a relentless amount of work, something no one can really prepare you for unless you were the eldest of 12 who was forced to help raise your siblings since you were ten years old. Insane because as my Dad so kindly reminded me, "One plus one doesn't equal two" and recounted just how much money he had spent on my brother and me from when my parents split when I was 10, through college, according to his Quicken file called "Laurie and Eric."

Insane because Owen has been sleeping through the night for more than a year now, going down at about 7 p.m. and yelling for us at 6:30 a.m. He walks (runs, really), feeds himself (when he isn't throwing it on the floor) and points to what he wants (to be lifted up to push elevator buttons and flip light switches). After the first year, it has gotten easier in many ways (minus the tantrums), so why ruin a good thing?

Me and Eric

Perfect because both Dave and I have siblings and like having siblings. You have someone to commiserate with about your embarrassing, perplexing parents. You have someone to help you take care of them when they become old and feeble (or at least someone to push the responsibility on to). You have someone to play with, when you're not beating the crap out of each other. You have someone to blame things on and a constant reminder that the center of the universe is not you.

Perfect because Dave and I would like the life experience of raising a boy and a girl. As my friend, Julie, observed during a play date while Owen hurled wooden trains across the room and her 2-year-old daughter, Sylvie, sat quietly on her lap watching him, "Boys and girls really are different." And I think there is something to the mama's boy, daddy's girl phenomenon that in many ways, it's easier to bond with a child of the opposite gender. Now that I've got my mama's boy, it's only fair that Dave get his daddy's girl.

I realize that personalities also come into play and as far as siblings are concerned, just because you share a fair amount of DNA doesn't guarantee you'll be best friends forever. I don't think I liked Eric, three years my junior, until I was in college. Only then did I realize that he was actually a smart, funny, talented human being with underarm hair and a world perspective. He was more than a peon of a roommate who hogged the TV watching episodes of "He-Man" and "Scooby Doo" with his Legos strewn all over the family room floor. He was no longer the little brother I feared would embarrass me because he listened to Christian rock, didn't surf and couldn't find the down beat to save his life. I was sure he was destined to be a geek.

Now the joke's on me. He's the hip, LA architect who wears Liverpool soccer jerseys and newsboy caps (if you don't know what they are, you're just not cool enough), drives a silver Mini Cooper and has such a large, diverse music library that I had him make the play list for my wedding. I'm the more conventional, Jetta-driving writer living in the Midwest with my Nordstrom credit card and (now) Gap maternity clothes. He beat me to getting married and having kids by about 10 years as I appeared destined to a life filled with weekly coffee dates with suitors who overused emoticons and exclamation marks in their Match.com profiles. Who was the geek now?

So yeah, I'm a little nervous about playing referee to sibling rivalry while trying to meet the needs of two little people. Eric and I used to fight in the car so often that my Mom resorted to playing John Denver at top volume until we begged for mercy and promised to settle down. Who knew that "Rocky Mountain High" had such power? At home, Eric hit me in the shin with a wooden 2 X 4 because I changed the channel he was watching, stabbed me in the palm with a pencil for reasons I don't remember and slammed closed the books I was trying to read with my legs curled under me on the family room couch. In return, I split his lip, pinned him down and spit in his face and taunted him about his dyslexia: "At least I don't read backwards."

Lovely. No wonder my mom looked haggard and frustrated so much of the time. What does a woman have to do for a little peace and quiet?

Not have two children, for starters.

Who knows, maybe Owen and his little sister will be more playmates and confidantes than wrestling opponents and tattlers. Maybe like me and Eric, it will be a stage they eventually, thankfully grow out of only to appreciate each other's existence. Or maybe like Liz and Mary Cheney, one will publicly humiliate the other and Thanksgiving together will be off the table for the indefinite future.

In the end, you just roll the dice, hope for the best and get ready to face the somewhat messy, often heartwarming, in-the-end-it-was-worth-it procreation reality. Isn't that the definition of family?