My Son's Understanding (or Lack Thereof) of My New Pregnancy

My husband and I finally told our two-and-a-half-year-old son that we are having another baby. I figured with my swelling belly and modified activities, it was time. I also expected to get very little in the way of response from him, because I thought he might be too young to really understand it.

I was right. I asked him to come over to me to talk about it, which he did, but he couldn't tear himself away from the toy cars that were near by. I built up to it by reminding him about his friends who recently added new babies to their families. We talked about how another of his friend's mommy had a baby in her tummy.

"And I have a baby in my tummy," I said.

He whipped around and looked at me in amazement for a moment.

Then he said, "Want to play my cars?"

So much for that.

Later when we were rocking and getting ready for bed I said, "Can you say 'Goodnight' to the baby in my tummy?"

"Goodnight Baby in Tummy," he obediently replied.

And that was the end of that.

Fast forward several days. Today, I decided to put my foot down and get tough about his unbearable habit of making enormous messes (known to him as "castles") and then refusing to clean them up (one day when my husband was asking the boy to clean up one of the piles my son said, "No, Mommy do it!" Now if that doesn't make my blood boil, I don't know what does! Later my husband and I had a good laugh over the incident because it reminded us so much of a South Park episode during which Kyle's dad says something like, "Look at this mess you've left your mother to clean up!" Kyle's mother replies from another room, "What-what-WHAT?!?!" It's a classic, but I digress). As I was carrying the boy to his room for his umpteenth time out, he said, "Is Baby in Tummy OK?"

Awww.

I told him yes and that it was sweet of him to ask, so of course, he's already asked again.

To dispell the notion that he actually understands what is going on, this afternoon he made a startling announcement:

"Daddy have BIG baby in his tummy!"

Oh well.

How did your child react when you shared that there was a baby on the way?