By Katie Hyde

Some things are incomprehensible for a 3 year old’s mind.

For me, it was my mother’s pregnancy.

Her stomach swelled practically by the minute, her back always hurt too much to help out around the house and everyone always wanted to press their face to her tummy. Totally weird.

Also odd to my still-developing brain was the inundation of toys, clothes, rockers, high chairs, bottles, more toys, bibs, tee shirts saying “Mom’s Favorite”, games and MORE TOYS for someone that didn’t even exist yet.

The holiday season of 1996 was a bad, bad time for me.

The lightbulb finally went off when my parents sat me and my older sister Kirsten down and explained that little baby Libster was taking a nap inside Mommy’s tummy for a couple of months until she was ready to come meet us.

Then I realized something: I wanted to be pregnant, too.

So I grabbed my pink pillow that I always kept on my bed, stuffed it up my shirt and called it good. The act went on for about 3 months.

I must say, I was a very convincing actress.

When my parents would ask me to help out around the house, I would retort that my back hurt. When I would plop down on the couch beside my dad to watch some TV at night, I would throw my smelly white-socked feet up on his lap and ask him to rub my feet because “the twins” were hurting them. I would tell my mom I had a craving for chocolate after chocolate after chocolate because it was all just a natural part of the pregnancy. The act even continued at preschool, although my parents demanded that my pink pillow tummy stayed at home.

Needless to say, my parents were sick of the act. So they devised an ingenious plan to wean me off of the theatrics.

Christmas morning at 5 a.m. (remember those days?), I woke up and quickly launched my footie pajama-ed self off of my twin bed. I raced to my parents room, yanked on my mom’s hair, jumped on my dad, sang at the top of my lungs, until finally 10 minutes later they got up and led me and my other sister, Kirsten, downstairs to open our gifts.

Who do I see sleeping in a white wicker rocker beside the tree? Two baby dolls, a boy and a girl.

My parents had literally “delivered” the babies to me as a Christmas gift.