Like most moms I spend a lot of time reminiscing about Huck as a baby and toddler and having my mind blown at how much he’s changed.  Huck, on the other hand, is actually thinking ahead to a time I can’t even imagine.  I look at children around the age of nine and think they’re a different species from this kindergartener I’m so used to.  The thought of Huck as a teenager?  A grown-up?  Ridiculous.  But not to him.  He’s decided that one day he’ll be a scientist who works in his lab on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.  On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays he’ll be a science teacher at Muscota, and on Saturday a circus performer (juggling batons on fire).  He’ll work mornings and evenings and see his wife and four children during his afternoons off, and they’ll all live in our apartment building, which he assumes is the same one we’re in now.  I’m really hoping he’s wrong about that.  (No offense, building.)

But he reminisces sometimes, too.  On the way to church yesterday he said, “I used to always want to be a girl.  I would say ‘I wish I was a girl, I wish I was a girl, I wish I was a girl.’  But now I’m really happy to be a boy, because if I was a girl I might get pregnant someday and have to push really hard, and that could be tricky.  So I’m VERY happy to be a boy.”

I guess Mama’s been complaining a little too loudly about those 3.5 hours of pushing.  Have I ever told you that story?  Oh, let me see.  It was a Monday evening in March and …