Story Time: And Then There Were Three (Part 2)

As requested by at least one friend, I will add to my story of last week since no one else did. I will post another link if someone would like to join me this time as well, but it will only be open a week before I may add another segment myself!

Interrupting my moment of solitude, Digger, our chocolate lab scratched at the door. Right on time, he did this every night around six o'clock to demand he be fed. I would worry if he didn't. I got up from the couch and dragged my feet into the tiny kitchen. Struggling around my protruding belly, I squatted and eventually was able to reach back under the sink to scoop out a cupful of Digger's favorite organic dog food. He was almost as picky an eater as a human would be! As a puppy, when we first bought him from the farm up on Buck Road, he would refuse to eat what we gave him. It took us weeks, not to mention several dozen bags of food- dog food is not cheap, to discover a kind he liked.
Unlike his difficult to please appetite, he was quite content to being an outside dog. He was never allowed in our house, but wandered mostly from the garage to the yard which had a very comfortable and modern dog house, as far as those go. Nothing about even the harshest weather, thunder storms, hail, and the buckets and buckets of rain that poured on our little town in upstate Maine, seemed to phase him. If it was winter he preferred the garage, sleeping next to the space heater I would hook up to keep the chill away. Then in the spring, he would take up residence once again in his dog house. And before the fall gave way to the truly frigid weather, he seemed to favor neither, sometimes even opting to just sit between my dying rose bushes in the muddy soil. Such an odd dog sometimes, but I loved him all the same.
Digger had been our first baby, when Ben and I had struggled to conceive. We spent nearly sixteen months it seemed, always waiting and watching for the double pink line on the pregnancy test. I never thought it would be that difficult to get pregnant. After all I had many friends from church who would share their blessed news only a month or two after getting married! How could it come so easy for them, and while I, who watched everything I ate, took vitamins and supplements galore, swore off caffeine and alcohol long ago, and jogged for an hour each morning, couldn't seem to get that elusive bun in the oven to bake! Of course as fate would have it, as soon as we had started the paperwork for an adoption, the Lord had decided to finally give us our heart's desire.
One early morning in the middle of March, frost on the window from an everlasting winter, I woke up, stretched my arms high, caught a whiff of the bacon my loving husband was making for breakfast, and quickly had to dash into the bathroom, heaving as I ran! Something was different, I could feel it, and later that morning, Ben and I celebrated the long anticipated appearance of those two pink lines that we had begun to think would never show up!
After pausing to reflect over all that had happened in the last two years, Digger reminded me he was waiting for his dinner with another scratch at the door. He was beginning to wear out the bottom of my back door. Where once it had been a scarlet red, towards the bottom it now faded into the worn wood showing through the paint in many tiny crevices that where an exact match to Digger's front right claws. I gripped the top of the counter and used my arms to help pull myself back up into a standing position, though my knees were painfully protesting this change in position. I waddled over to the door in the corner of the kitchen that led out to our small yard, and opened the door as Digger backed away to make a path for me. I took the two steps off the door stoop very carefully and dumped the food into one of his empty bowls. The other bowl I filled with water using our old patched up garden hose. Digger instantly went to work clearing his dishes of any trace of dinner, then went around the corner of the house to the side where his favorite rose bushes were, with the perfect Digger-sized gap between them in the mud, as I made my way back inside to begin preparations for a late meal to share with Ben.
I snacked on some crunchy carrots as I boiled the water for the spaghetti noodles. The crunch of the crisp carrots as I chewed echoed loudly in my ears as I was distracted watching a blue jay hoping around on the window sill. I jumped when I felt the two arms attempt to wrap around my extra-large midsection. After the initial surprise wore off, I relaxed into the warm body standing behind me and closed my eyes. I turned to try and bury my face into Ben's chest, but failed as I craned my neck just to be able rest the top of my head against him. My belly was squeezed in between us, and as if trying to be included in this tender moment, our little one gave her- or his- Daddy a sharp kick. If only I could freeze time, I would stay here forever.
All to soon, Ben brushed his lips against the top of my head and planted a kiss somewhere in my tangle of brown curls, before taking a step back and asking "What's for dinner?"
"Spaghetti," I said as I walked to the stove, salted the water, and poured some noodles into the now boiling pot of water. "Should be ready in about 15 minutes, if you want to get a quick shower in while I finish."
"Sounds good."
As Ben headed into the bedroom, stripping off his shirt before he was even halfway down the hall, I was mesmerized by his half naked backside. I was more in love with him now then I had ever been. The love I had for him was so overwhelming sometimes, that I wondered how I could still contain so much affection for him, and share it with our baby as well. Would my love be split in half between the two, or could my heart possibly handle even more love and devotion, doubly what it contained now?

What happens next? Its up to you!