This week’s photo collection features a few snapshots from a recent family reunion involving six of my mother’s nine brothers and sisters and all their children and all their children’s children. My mother’s maiden name is Boone, and yes, we are descended from Daniel Boone, the original backwoods redneck. You won’t be surprised to find out that all of my mother’s siblings like to sit around and talk about bodily functions, including but not confined to pooping, farting, burping, and the way their panties (pronounced “PAIN-ees”) get stuck up their butt crack. It even gets too much for me to handle. Shocking, I know. These are also the type of people who instead of buying handi-wipes to clean up jellied faces and sticky hands after a meal opt for anti-bacterial SURFACE CLEANER wipes to sterilize their children, because they were on sale. My niece walked around the last half of the reunion with half of her face eaten off by chemicals.
Most of these photos are of my immediate family, however, because I was too busy trying to guard my food from roving Boone buffoons to take many pictures. Plus there was the screaming match I had with my brother about economics and politics and the fact that PRESIDENT BUSH DID NOT LIE ABOUT IRAQ!!, which I’m pretty sure submarines in the Atlantic Ocean could hear because my brother was yelling it over his screaming baby. It was the type of conversation wherein my brother refers to me as “Sister-of-mine,” as if to say that I am not a human being (how could I be? I didn’t vote for Bush!) and just some sort of evolved embryo that once occupied the same womb space that he did. God, I love him dearly.
This week’s photos also feature my belly at 16 weeks. I think I saw more growth this week than any other week I’ve been pregnant. I know it doesn’t look very big, and people are totally rolling their eyes, but you have to understand that I am 5 feet 11 inches tall, and everything is elongated. I know it doesn’t look siginificant, but I totally feel it, and it’s much more exciting than I thought it would be. We heard the baby’s heartbeat again this week, 10 beats faster than at our last check-up, at 176 beats per minute. The doctor said that if he had to make an educated guess based on the heartbeat, he would bet that it is a girl. I think a girl would be totally cool, especially dressed in itty bitty Adidas trainers and a onesie that says “Motherfucking Festive.”