Babies, The Having Of

I've decided that I will no longer address how long it's been since I've written as I believe these pauses in writing might happen with some frequency until the Offspring has made his appearance and we have some semblance of order back in our lives. So see you in, what, 18 years?

In truth, I've been going through what pregnancy books poetically describe as "nesting." This conjures up such bucolic and charming thoughts of wading through a field of some sort, collecting flowers and Other Pretty Things with which to fill ones house in the hopes that everything will be festive and lovely when the child arrives. In reality, it can be pretty hard core. For instance, I'm not sure any member of my family will willingly take a phone call from me for the rest of the year given the amount of work I've put them through the in the past two weeks. We have overhauled the entire house. It's not nesting so much as, "Let's Tear This Bish Down and Start From Effing Scratch."

It came as a shock to both Marc and me that you can't just leave a baby with a few mixing bowls of water and a salt lick and ask the neighbors to check in on it once or twice to be sure he hasn't peed on the bed or started growing pot in the sunbox. Not only is this chap going to require a lot of work on our part, but he also requires a lot of STUFF. Stuff that we didn't have. I was under the impression that we would just empty a bottom drawer and put him in there for a while like the pioneers did, but apparently that is frowned upon. So now, I have a crib in my house, along with some other furniture that I hadn't planned on acquiring. Marc, wisely, fled the country on a "business trip" that involved a week in London followed by a weekend in Paris. I'm still suspicious that it wasn't all just to get out of dodge so that I wouldn't hand him an Allen wrench, some pieces of plywood and say, "HERE! Twirl this! It's going to be the poo changing table!" Though had Paris been my alternative, I would have followed suit. Instead, my parents and siblings are all now in possession of achy joints and broken nails, wondering how it is that I got them to do all of this stuff in the space of ten days. German efficiency! (Always blame genetics.) I think they also feared that they might end up at the bottom of the river if they didn't obey the pregnant woman - such is the power of hormones.

But honestly, I couldn't be more grateful. I'm nearing the 6.5 month mark, and now that everything is complete, I can skate through the last trimester and just enjoy it...that is if you call losing sight of your toes enjoyable. But I'll be able to escape for weekends with my husband, focus on these last months of it just being the two of us, walk the dog, add little things to our sons room here and there and just be at peace knowing that all of the big things are DONE, and done well. I am so blessed in my family.

I'll post photos soon of what we did so that you can sit back and be impressed. For now, however, I have to go shower and throw myself across my bed at the young hour of 8pm. The fatigue is hard to describe, but if I attempted to walk down the street right now, I think I would just lie down in the gutter forever after a few steps. And considering we live across the street from the police station, I'm sure I'd get ticketed. And at my size, it would be considered a moving violation. Who needs that kind of humiliation?