They place the side dishes on the table, and then Nadia pulls a chair up next to me. She smooths a hand over my stomach. I love when she touches me like this — when she looks at my stomach this way as if she already loves this baby as much as the ones she gave birth to. Because she does.

She leans forward, her mouth brushes my belly, and she whispers to our new baby.

“You hear that, sweet pea? Chess. A nice, calm, quiet game. Chess, chess, chess.”

“What about gymnastics?” Darren asks.

We’re all quiet and consider that.

“We could go to the Olympics,” I offer.

“Big crowds, but not too loud normally?” Nadia considers.

We all nod, and then the boys crowd my stomach. “Gymnastics. Gymnastics. Gymnastics,” they chant in pre-teen excitement against my stomach. Not surprisingly, their little brother goes absolutely apeshit at the sound of their voices.

I laugh so loud that I have to cross my ankles for fear that I’ll wet myself.

“Ribs are done,” Darren calls.

I’ve never been happier than this.

In the end, we decided on an extension.

We considered moving, but every house we looked at, no matter how beautiful and old, wasn’t quite right. Not even that one house with the exposed brick fireplace that Nadia had loved and talked about for weeks after the viewing. Darren and Nadia were open, but I shut every option down.

The boys love their school. Their best friends live down the street. They have roots and routines, and the thought of ripping them from that made me want to cry even before Darren knocked me up. And it wasn’t just because I wanted Nate and Danny to love me. I wanted them to know that I loved them, even before I could tell them apart – Danny has a mole in the whites of his eyes and Nate is left-handed. I loved them as an extension of loving their parents, and then, as I grew to know them, I loved them as their own people, and I couldn’t tear them away from everything they knew.

So, in the end, we added an extension to the house. We enlarged the former master bedroom so there was room for my clothes in their closet, and we could add a small bedroom for the new baby while preserving the spare bedroom for the boys when they were ready to sleep apart.

They made room for me in their house, and sometimes — especially when the hormones are on ten — just thinking about it makes me cry.