Waiting For You

Chapter 26: Thankful

Chapter 26: Thankful

Amelia

I've been cooking all day. The whole apartment smells like pumpkin pie and homemade bread. I'm starving, but save a few sneaky tastes of the simmering cranberry sauce, I've barely had anything since lunch. It'll be another couple hours before we head over to my parents' for dinner and I'm not sure I can hang on until then. I'm going to starve to death with all of this delicious food surrounding me.

Sam just left a few minutes ago to get his mother at the airport, which means I've got about half an hour to turn this mess of a kitchen into something fit for company. I also need to shower and change into something nice, if that even exists for me anymore.

To be honest, I'm just hoping for comfortable at this point.

The twins are almost a quarter of a pound each this week; they're like two little avocados, floating around in amniotic fluid. I'm already feeling so bloated, I can only imagine what it'll feel like in a few more weeks.

Somehow I manage to get everything done with just moments to spare. I've got my hair curled and a full face of makeup on by the time I hear the front door of the apartment open, followed by Sam's voice.

"Hey!" I say, coming out of the bathroom to meet them in our cramped living room.

"Oh my, you weren't kidding," my mother-in-law gasps and immediately puts her hands on my belly. I only feel a little awkward, since she is family. One of my colleagues did the same thing once when I wore a particularly tight sweater to school a few days ago and that definitely wasn't received as well – not that I had the nerve to say anything to her about it. As tempting as it may be to want to touch a pregnant belly, people need to learn some manners; even expecting mamas like to have their personal space. "I can't believe you've got two little ones in there!"

"Yeah, me neither... I look like I've got three," I reply with a smile. Angela looks at me sharply and I quickly raise my hands up defensively. "I'm not! It's just two," I clarify.

"Two is plenty for now," Sam chuckles.

"How are you feeling? Have you been getting sick a lot?" Angela continues as we gravitate toward the kitchen, and she takes it upon herself to help me finish up the dishes.

I tell her all about my symptoms and Sam takes his phone out so that he can show her our most recent ultrasound, as well as the photo I put up on Instagram this week. It's only when she starts going into great detail about her own pregnancies that Sam disappears into the bathroom to shower, clearly not interested in the specifics of how he and his brother came to be.

It's definitely a bit much, even for me, but she does reveal a few interesting facts about baby Sam that I didn't really know before now – like the fact that he was almost eleven pounds, and he had to be delivered via C-section at forty-one weeks. "He was always very big. Even in school, he was always the tallest in his class... even taller than the boys," she explains.

"I'll bet," I smile.

"Just one more thing to be self-conscious about growing up," Sam says dryly as he comes back into the kitchen, hair still wet, button-up shirt only halfway buttoned up.

"It wasn't that bad," Angela says, dismissing him with a wave of her hand.

"Yeah, sure," Sam scoffs.