We didn’t talk about the idea of another baby for a week or so. We were so busy trying to get things straightened out in our existing family that we just really didn’t have any time to talk about it. I was thinking about it though, through all the therapist appointments and meetings with editors and bosses and representatives from the Komen Foundation and a bunch of other stuff.

We were also trying to get ready for Kallie’s birthday. It was tougher than I’d thought to get everything planned; the year before she hadn’t been too aware of what was going on and we’d been able to just let her smoosh cake on herself without really doing anything special. This year, she pretty much knew what was going on around her, and she had a personality. She loved those weird puppet-things on the movies Shane bought for her, and from what I’d gathered they were pretty popular with kids her age, so I wanted to make them the theme of the party.

The cake part was really easy. My mom gave me a recipe for angel food cake with sugar-free strawberry frosting, and we decided to have sandwiches for everybody instead of some big involved dinner. The others seemed pretty happy with that, and Shane had been telling them which puppet-thing presents Kallie didn’t already have, so most of her presents would be related to the movies. I thought it was all a little nuts, but Alice was happy about it.

“She loves that crap,” she told me fondly a few days before the party, when we’d stopped at the store to get paper plates and napkins with the puppet-things on them. “She’ll grow out of it.”

“I just don’t get what’s so appealing,” I mumbled, looking again at a picture of one of the things and trying to figure it out, to no avail.

“You’re not really supposed to, baby. She’s two,” Alice giggled. “What you should be worried about is why Shane’s into it. She’s the one that got Kallie hooked.”

I sighed and shook my head. I’d thought it was a little strange when Shane had seemed to be so into it, but it made Kallie happy so I wasn’t going to judge. I could never get into that stuff; watching half an hour of it in the mornings was enough to make me want to tear my hair out.