Monday, December 9th, 2035

18 Days to Baby

A lot of kids at our high school loved helping out with the Holiday Spectacular, because if you did, then you got to miss the last period of class once a week starting in October. Now that we were in December, it was almost every day. With our rotating schedule, my last class of the day on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays was US history. We were learning about the pandemic that happened when we were all babies. That and the Trump administration. Que the barfing noises.

"I'm literally gagging. I can't be in here with all this paint," I said to Mister Green, our art teacher.

The art room was full of all different props that everyone was painting. It really smelled in there.

"Okay. I'll write you up a pass so you can sit in the library and cut out the paper snowflakes then."

"Sweet! You're the best, Mister Green."

"Yeah, I know," he said, giving me a hall pass.

I still couldn't believe he left being a dentist and all that good money to pursue his passion of art by becoming a high school art teacher. Anyway, I made my way down to the library, found a table, and got to cut out snowflakes instead of doing boring history.

After that, it was finally time to go home. Tonight was going to be awesome. It was the Covington Family Annual Gingerbread House Competition. All of our aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents were going to be there. Of course, my family said Tobias could come too, so tonight we'd see if our relationship could handle some friendly teamwork and competition.

We had dinner, then the whole family arrived. We packed into the dining room, all taking our seats around the table that sat twenty people. We had hot chocolate, cookies, candy canes, and the perfect Christmas playlist picked out. I was trying not to sneak bites of the gingerbread that would be the walls of our house.

All of us were divided up into teams of two. We each had four walls, two pieces for the roof, and a ton of candy and icing to decorate with. I picked out everything blue, because I wanted to do something different, and to represent Baby Christopher.

"On your marks, get set, go!" my mom said, setting the timer on her phone.

We all rushed to get to work. I was busy decorating the roof while Tobs started building the walls of the house. I was doing a delicate baby blue footprint pattern going across the sides of the roof. We did this every year. I was an expert at doing the little details, even though we only had thirty minutes to do it.

"Ten! Nine! Eight!"

I watched as my siblings rushed to finish their gingerbread houses, but my boyfriend and I just sat back in our chairs with confidence. We were done almost five full minutes before the time was up.

"Three! Two! One!" said all the adults.

"Okay! Time's up!" said my mom. "Now, for this year's mystery judge...who will it be?"

"Oh, I wanna pick! I wanna do it!" Hawk said, reaching over to the hat filled with names that our mom was holding. She handed it over to him and he reached in, then took out the paper and looked at it. "It's Grandpa Stanley!"

"Uh-oh, I'm in trouble now, aren't I?" Grandpa Stanley said with a laugh. "I really have to pick all by myself?

"Yes!" said all the kids.

"Okay then. Let's look at all these houses then," he said, starting to stroll around the table.

I was nervous as I looked across the table at Lukas and Phoenix's gingerbread house. They did everything in red and green. Grandpa Stanley loved Christmas, and that was his favorite color combination.

He walked over to that red and green house. I could see the smile on his face. But he did smile when he saw ours too. We were still in this.

"Well, I think I have to go with this one. I'm such a sucker for red and green!" he said, pointing to the house my brothers made.

"Yes! Nailed it!" they said in unison as they high-fived.

"No fair!" I said, crossing my arms. "The details I did on mine are so much better!"

"Stop being a sore loser, Ella!" Phoenix said.

"You only one because he liked the colors!" I said.

"And see. This is why I didn't want to be a judge," Grandpa Stanley said.

"Noelle Claire, you need to just accept the results. It's just a family competition," my dad said.

"But I put in so much effort every year and I never win the gingerbread house competition!" I said, tears running down my face. Pregnancy hormones were something else. "And I didn't win the snowman competition over the weekend!"

Tobias put his arm around me and tried to console me. I dabbed my eyes with a santa-patterned napkin as my family watched in awkward silence.

"Geez, who's the real baby? You or the one inside you?" Phoenix said.

"Shut up! I wish your heart actually did give out before you were born and you didn't make it!" I said. I probably shouldn't have, but I did anyway.

"Enough! You're both done! Go to your rooms. Now!" my mom said.

I gave Tobs a quick hug and ran upstairs, where I fell on my bed and started having an uncontrollable pregnancy cry. It really left me questioning my situation. I literally still felt like a kid. I'd only be seventeen when Baby Christopher was born. I couldn't even vote or go to doctor's appointments by myself because I was still a minor. There were only seventeen days left now.

Am I really ready to actually be a mom?