Brit paused from the arm of the couch where she'd been busy practicing her balancing act and sneered down at her little sister. "Who says you get to choose, toad?"

"Because I want a little sister!" Tammy whined back. "All's I got is two dumb little brothers and you."

"If you get a little sister," Brit pointed out, "she's gonna be seven whole years younger'n you. Know what that means? That means when she's seven, you'll be... Mom, how old will Tammy be?"

"Fifteen," Portia replied absently. She had just finished changing Bryce Asel and had put him down on the living room floor to play with his blocks, and ended up playing with him. Portia liked playing with blocks. Maybe it was the bright colors or the smooth texture of the well-sanded, much-handled wood; maybe it was the way life got quieter when you lived it at a baby's pace. She found the green D on the side of one block - Brit used to try to swallow the D more than any other letter, she remembered - and showed it to Bryce Asel. Bryce Asel batted it out of her hand and giggled.

"Wait..." Portia said, reconsidering. "Fourteen."

"So? Fourteen-year-olds can play with seven-year-olds!" Tammy insisted.

"Mom, how old will I be? Mom!" Brit shouted.

Without looking away from Bryce Asel, Portia answered, "Stop yelling; I'm sitting right here. And didn't you learn addition in school yet? You're nine now... nine plus seven is..."

"Sixteen? I'll be sixteen. I'll be driving! Yippee!" Brit took a flying leap off the couch and landed heavily a foot away from Bryce Asel, and narrowly missed a couple of the wooden blocks.

"Careful, girl," Portia admonished her oldest as she offered an orange 5 to the baby.

Tammy turned to DC, who had been sitting quietly and flipping through a picture book. Everyone said DC was going to be the reader of the family, but Portia suspected he was just a visual thinker. He was the only kid who became enraptured by the television, and he had a thing for staring out the window during car rides. Not that he wasn't active, but his activity came in spurts, as opposed to the nonstop energetics of his two older sisters.

"Hey, DC, whaddyou want Mom to have? A girl or a boy?" Portia had to smile at the way Tammy had her priorities set, even when asking questions.

The 3-year-old (almost four! Time to start thinking about birthday parties, Portia reminded herself) looked up from his page. "I don't wanna nother baby. We awreddy gotta baby."

Portia laughed. "I don't think we've got a choice, hun," she informed him. "We already have the new baby. It's growing in my belly. I can't ungrow it. I gotta finish growing it."

"You like having babies, dontcha, Mom," Brit said.

"Well... I wouldn't say that. Having babies is a pain in the ass. But I like the babies themselves. I like Bryce Asel and DC and Tammy and you."

"I'm not a baby," Brit pointed out.

"Me either!" added Tammy.

"Yeah," Portia said, "But I liked you when you were babies, and I liked you when you were toddlers, and now that you're bigger, I still like you. There ain't nothing you can do about it. I'm going to like you forever until the end of the world."

"What about love us?" Tammy asked.

"Course I love you. But I like you too. It's important to do both."

"What're you gonna name the new baby?" Brit asked for maybe the thousandth time.

DC looked up from his book again. "Nummer five," he said. "Wight, Mommy?"

"Number..." Portia thought about that. Then it dawned on her and she chuckled. "Nah, I'm just calling it that for now. Me and Daddy will give it a better name later."

"Why you keep calling the baby an it?" Tammy asked as she sat down beside Portia and Bryce Asel. She picked up a block and put it on top of another one. "Isn't the baby a he or a she? Can babies be born its?"

"Nope," Portia replied as she placed a third block on Tammy's small stack.

"Then is it gonna be a he or a she?"

Portia waited for Tammy to add a fourth block to the block tower and then added one more of her own. "I dunno."

"That's why you haven't thought of a name yet, Mom?" Brit asked as she swung her foot at the block tower. Tammy fended her off with her arm, emitting a protesting whine.

"Yup," Portia confirmed. "And because thinking of names is the funnest part. I like to take my time... look around... think carefully... and then when I find the perfect name, I let it sit in my mind for a while. I keep it a secret. I dream about it at night. And then when the baby comes out, I'll know I have the perfect name, so I write it on the birth certificate. But I don't always know it until that very moment."

"Oh," said Tammy thoughtfully. She placed another block on top of the tower and then invited Bryce Asel to knock it down. Bryce Asel took a wild swing and laughed as the tower toppled to the floor. Tammy looked back up at Portia. "Do you ever dream about giant monsters eating you?"