Confused Convictions of Cosmic Conceptions

Every time my mother comes to visit, she's sure to point out that my children are exhibiting their zodiac signs. I've never been big on using the cosmos as a device for creating personality. If anything, climate or natural disasters should be taken into account. The husband was born the year Mt. St. Helens blew up. I find more parallel there than with Jupiter's position in the universe.

Zippy, my daughter, is a Gemini. Geminis, known for their dual nature, can bounce from this to that and back again. Just today, as we were exploring outside, she took my hand and zig-zagged across the property, pointing things out, screaming and cooing, crying and laughing, shrieking at the bees and petting roly poly bugs (which, by the way, are also called "bees"). I just took her behavior and attributed it to being a toddler. When I thought about it, though, the other toddlers that we know are no where as severe and quick at changing personalities like Zippy.

Her whole existence has been a little tense. She's my first child. I was nervous all throughout the pregnancy. There were several months of vomiting. I hated the kicking and the sloshing around that was going on in my womb. I was cranky a lot of the time (really don't understand how women have "happy" pregnancies). The contractions during her birth were the most horribly stupid, intense, torturous pain anyone could ever feel. She was born in the middle of a sickly, hot summer. She was incredibly colicky. Zippy was harder to understand than Finnegan's Wake, more stubborn than a frostbit fireplug and more restless than Richard Gere in a gerbil farm. She has only slept through the night a handful of times. She is an Air sign, and her wind is always changing directions.

Doesn't it make more sense that a pregnancy, birth, and even weather would contribute more to the molding of her mind as opposed to where huge orbs in the sky happen to be spinning? Is it coincidence that she acts like astrologers said she would act? Astrologers, who often have the power of a totem pole and the heart of a rat, who will tell you who you are and what you should do for a ridiculous amount of money and show documents with strange symbols on it to prove it?

Chief, my younger son, is the complete opposite. Chief is a Libra. Libra is the only sign that does not represent a human or an animal (reason number 45 that I'm convinced he's from another planet). It is the sign of easy-going balance and if I were to apply that idea here it would be that Chief's mellow mindedness balances out Zippy's extreme insanity. He is the Yang to her Yin.

The pregnancy was relatively easy (with the exception of the kicking, which I still didn't appreciate very much). He was born on a cool autumn night. The birth was fantastic because I had been so drugged up that when it came time to push, I couldn't feel a thing and was basically faking it, laughing and watching t.v.. He didn't cry right after I expelled him out of me, as if to project the notion that we all just need to relax a little bit. He slept a lot, didn't cry very often. He yaks and laughs like living was the best thing that could ever happen to his fetus face. From what I've researched, he's a complete Libra.

Tonight, I learned that I am the epitome of Virgo and my husband couldn't be any less of a Capricorn. Maybe there really is something to this zodiac business. Maybe it's okay to even plan pregnancies around the night sky, especially now that we can practically genetically engineer our children. Why not take it t the cosmic level? Maybe when I complain to the husband that the silverware isn't properly stacked in the drawer or when I am overcritical about his friends, I can just blame Jupiter's position in the universe and be done with it.