Whoa nelly, look at that belly.

Since discovering — quite unexpectedly — that I was pregnant with my third baby, I’ve observed an interesting phenomenon when letting others in on the news. It’s very subtle, but it’s there — a certain “Wha—?” look that crosses people’s faces ever so briefly before they pull themselves together and say, “Oh! You’re expecting again! How wonderful!”

I liken it to the reactions you get to repetitive sneezing. First sneeze: hearty, heartfelt “Bless you!” Second sneeze: less enthusiastic, but still relatively sincere, “Bless you.” Third sneeze: incredulity. Silence. And a look that says WOMAN. ENOUGH WITH THE SNEEZING.

It’s a little like that.

Maybe that glimmer of shock I think I see in people’s eyes is really all in my head, but nevertheless I find myself feeling the need to qualify my bun-in-the-oven announcement with a “Wow, were we ever surprised!” kind of disclaimer, because it feels like it takes our crazy quotient down a notch or two. (Of course, we sort of always thought we’d have three kids one day — my husband and I are both the oldest of three siblings — but that will just be our little secret, OK vast and limitless Internet?) Because really — three kids? Three? We still have cereal for dinner sometimes! We’ve never had a mortgage! We make totally inappropriate jokes and laugh at them! We are not three-kid parent material, no sir. And yet, here we are.

The thing is, I think two kids is sort of the “norm” these days — at least among the families that populate my kids’ schools and our neighborhood. And why not? Like the oft-repeated phrase, it’s classic, dependable man-to-man defense. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said that exact phrase, like, “Dude, what are you thinking? You’re going from man-to-man to ZONE DEFENSE.” Which might freak me out if I had any idea whatsoever what the rules of football were. (I JOKE. I know it’s really basketball. Because I just Googled it.) But the truth is, I thought one kid was hard. Really, anything after that was just ridiculous. So we’ve already maxed out. Well done, us.

You know what’s way cool, though? The fact that my three kids will have each other. Sure, they might have to wear dirty socks to school occasionally and learn how to make their own sandwiches at an earlier age than only children do, but they’ll have compadres, a posse, homies. Two other people who truly get it when it comes to that thing that Dad always does or that way Mom gets. (And by that way, I’m sure they’ll mean awesome.) I know we’ll mess them up somehow, like parents inevitably do, but we’ll mess them up the same. They’ll be their own little unique snowflakes of weird, our-style. It just warms the heart, doesn’t it?

Awww, my little weirdos.

So yes! We’ll do this three kid thing then, cereal dinners, dirty socks and all. And we’ll probably be a little bit bonkers, especially at first. But hopefully we’ll find our family of five rhythm and learn to beat it loud and proud as we blaze our way through three first days of kindergarten, 60 lost teeth, 134,255,632 seasons of soccer, eleventy-three squillion dollars worth of braces, infinity fights and countless inside jokes — most of which will be aimed at Luke and me, no doubt. I say bring it on. Because though I may have no clue about zone defense, I don’t think that really matters in the end. After all, we’re really all playing for the same team.

Rachel Reiff Ellis lives in Decatur with her husband, Luke, and her two (soon to be three) kids: 7- year-old Noah, who is losing teeth by the minute; and 3-year-old Rosie, who knows all the words to the theme song from “Punky Brewster.” They’re totally rad in all possible ways, and she’s not just saying that because she gave birth to them.