I’m about to tell my company I’m pregnant. I told my extended family over Christmas, I told the Internet back in November, at five weeks, and I of course told my husband before the test was even dry. I don’t know if I’ll ever tell Facebook because, well, I kind of hate Facebook (okay, not “kind of,” I really hate Facebook) and so the next big step is definitely telling my boss and supervisor and coworkers, in part because I’m excited, duh; in part because I don’t want them wondering where I’ve disappeared to when I drop off their radar from July to October; and in part because I don’t want anyone there to think I must hate them (as I hate Facebook and all Montagues) because I waited so long to share the news. I’m already 15 weeks along, and at this point even postponing the announcement until week 16 feels like an insult.

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We spent the holidays with my family in Utah and had ourselves a jolly-good time, but then three days after Christmas my grandfather died in a car crash on his way to the volunteer job he’d been doing several times a week for thirty years (THIRTY YEARS) and, well, it wasn’t a very happy New Year after all. (My mom took that tack of greeting family members with a cheer of “Crappy New Year, huh?” and everyone nodded in solemn agreement.)

My little family of three (and one-third) were originally supposed to fly back to California on the day after the accident, but we ended up extending our stay by five days (for a total of thirteen) so we could be there for the funeral. It wasn’t the greatest of trips–in addition to the grief and the harried logistics of funeral planning, we weren’t prepared for that much time away, and I spent most of those extra five days working–but it wasn’t all bad, and if I may take a break from talking about work here, I’d like to share a few things I learned about parenthood, parents, and grandparents.
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