maggie remembers it this way: we had decided not to learn the gender of the baby before the birth, so we alternated between using 'him' or 'her.' one morning when i was just a few months pregnant, we were laying in bed talking about the baby in my belly, trying to imagine how different life would be when...i hesitated...i didn't want to say 'it.' just then i heard a pigeon on the roof, so i continued with how different life would be when the 'pigeon' comes out of my belly. tim thought this was amusing and repeated it. 'yeah, the pigeon,' he said. it stuck.

tim's version: when molly was little and living in mag's belly, she used to flutter around all the time so we called her pigeon. and even after she was born, we still call molly 'the pigeon.'