Niece or Nephew?

My brother, Mark, and his wife, Sara, are expecting their first baby sometime in late May or early June. The whole family is buzzing with excitement, and we are particularly jonesed about welcoming either a niece or nephew into the clan.

But, which will it be? Boy or girl? We may find out on Thursday when they go in for an ultrasound.

There is, of course, a 50-50 chance of either possibility happening. Those of you who were awake in middle school biology class know that the male actually determines the sex by either passing the X (for a girl) or Y (for a boy) chromosome. (Now seriously, if you didn't know that, you have problems). That's why I went around holding up three fingers in the shape of a "Y" to my forehead shouting "XY!" after we found out that our two babies were both going to be boys. Yeah, there was a reason.

Cartoonists do even wackier things on top of that, like drawing cartoons trumpeting baby's gender "reveal." I've made three cartoons for this purpose, using Brenda Monarch and Dave Kodiak (my two comic strip characters) to help spread the news.

The first cartoon, pictured above, is from 2004, right after we found out that Charlie was going to be a boy. Brenda, and I suspect to some degree Jena and definitely my mother and my mother-in-law, were all hoping for a girl. But we had been planning to have two children, so there was still a possibility of having a girl down the road. The original plan was to do this four years later, in 2008, hence Brenda's toast to that year.


But, as it turned out, we decided to have "K2" (Kid Two) a couple years early. When we went in for the ultrasound, I had this drawing already completed; I was pretty convinced that K2 was going to be a girl. Nope. Jena was disappointed at first, but she very quickly decided that having two boys was going to be a lot of fun and "owned" it. I can tell that my mother and mother-in-law were, deep down inside, a little disappointed too but they have also embraced the idea. They never did the "Y" to the forehead, but I didn't really expect them to. As an aside, my mother-in-law is now going to be the grandmother to EIGHT boys. What are the odds of that happening? One in 64.

You probably can't make this out too well, but scribbled on the wall inside the penalty box are the words "Schmitt was here `06," a reference to Jason and Sue Schmitt, who had found out previously that their K2 was going to be a girl, eventually named Danica. K1 was a boy, Becken.


After finding out K2 was going to be a boy, I went home and drew this cartoon. Jena actually held her tongue and didn't tell anyone about the ultrasound results until I had this finished that night. I know that was a really hard thing to do, so kudos to my wife.

We named K2 James Wyatt, and he was born on September 25, 2006.

Charlie was, and still is, a blondie with red highlights, so his hair isn't as blond as Dave's. Charlie, a few months under two at the time, didn't say too many words, but said "vacuum" a lot, hence the quote here. Also, this is actually the second version of this cartoon. In the first, Brenda was further to the right of the slot machine, was wearing a pout, and had a tear running down her face. Jena didn't like that design too well, so I quickly amended it to what you see here. Ah, the wonders of Photoshop.

So will Mark and Sara have a girl or a boy? My guess is that they will have a girl, and they'll name her Autumn Mackenzie. (If it's a boy they have said they'll name him Owen William). Mathematical odds seem to point to there being a girl.

And superstition. This is, after all, 2008, the year that the cartoon at the top told us to wait for.