Joshua's Spot

All our bags are packed...

At long last, after much bludgeoning and doom-saying on my part (a brief sample: "You know, if you don't pack your bag yourself, you're going to wind up coming home in whatever underwear I pick for you - and you know what that means...!!?!") - Felicia FINALLY packed her bag for the hospital. Which was an odd experience, since in part we were packing for a little baby we haven't even met yet. We went down the packing list provided in the Bible (a.k.a. The Girlfriends Guide to Pregnancy) and stuffed all kinds of things into Felicia's hospital bag, from slippers and socks (to keep her little footsies warm while she's walking around the labor floor in between contractions), to shampoo and conditioner (so she can get cleaned up and beautified afterward), to little tiny socks and hat and blanky and binky for the baby to come home in. Not to mention the all-important camera, video camera, extra flash memory cards and batteries, and all the various other things yours truly will need in order to keep his dazed and panicky self productively occupied and record the event for posterity while Felicia is doing all the hard work.

So I guess we must be just about ready. We're all packed up. The car seat is installed. The changing table and bassinet are all set up next to our bed. The baby clothes are freshly laundered, and all our bottles and binkies and things have been run through the dishwasher and are sparkly clean. Felicia even had her pedicure yesterday, courtesy of ButzMom, so her toes are all pretty and clean - which is what she was really waiting for all this time.

Now if we could just convince Joshua that it's time to come out, we'll be ready to rock.

We had a nice little last-minute dinner party last night, with Steve & Liz and Lisa & Matt, along with ButzMom & Mike and me & Felicia (plus Joshua and Steve & Liz's little critter, who is doing his/her best to race up behind Joshua and come out first, the little cheater). Since I know the first question all you food-obsessed Butzes are going to ask, I'll anticipate: the menu was salmon with roasted tomatoes and Israeli couscous; a lentil and bulgur salad with spinach, basil, and cilantro; fresh spaghetti squash; and capri salad as an appetizer (tomato slices with fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, and a drizzle of olive oil on top). ButzMom, for her part, contributed her famous Skor for dessert (yum!), and we had a couple nice wines plus one somewhat sketchy one that Steve grabbed while Liz wasn't around to supervise. A good time was had by all... but my secret plan to prod Joshua into action by getting us all involved in something fun and entertaining - thus activating his interrupt-mommy-and-daddy-to-claim-all-the-attention instincts - somehow failed to do the job.

So I guess we'll have to shift to Plan B - which is to go to Ashland for the day and have a good time somewhere about 45 minutes' drive from the hospital, away from our freshly-packed hospital bags and all the other stuff we need, and where it would be really inconvenient to go into labor. Surely that will work.

And if that fails, we'll just have to resort to the old standby: SEX. Durnit.

The "Pack's" Final Days...

ButzMom and Mike arrived Wednesday evening, to be here for the delivery and help out while we're flailing around in the deep end trying to stay above water as new parents (more on that later). So all Tuesday night, as Felicia and Gimli and I were sitting on the couch in the family room - Gimli graciously allowing us to share a small corner of "his" couch, that is, as long as we huddled close to each other and didn't get in the way of his couch-top racetrack - Felicia would look up periodically from her book and spout out something like, "Just think, Honey: this is the last night we'll ever be alone with just our little Pack."

Which my mind, of course, translated as something more or less like "The End of Life As We Know It." And just in case the panic attack hadn't really set in quite thoroughly enough, my oh-so-loving-but-ever-so-slightly-sadistic little wife would repeat this morbid pronouncement, and then watch to see which way I twitched.

So take that little scene and repeat to coda six or eight times against a backdrop of Sex in the City and his-and-hers Patricia Cornwell novels, and you should have a pretty good idea how our Tuesday evening went. By the time we finally went to bed, at our usual old-people time of about, oh, 8:30, it wasn't just my recently-operated-on leg that was twitching like mad.

All week, we've had enough activity up here to keep me running around like a madman pretty much from sunrise to sunset, none of it on the stuff that I'm actually paid to do for a living. Each day this week has been one of our "hot and cold running contractors" days around the house, with guys working on installing frames to pour new concrete for our front porch, another set of guys planting about 30 trees and 30 shrubs all around the property, still another set of guys laying the new hardwood floors in the baby room... and it goes on. (And you thought I was kidding when I said I was putting in all kinds of neato trees for the baby!)

So no, Beth, I don't have pictures of the baby room. a) Because it's still not done, and won't be until basically the day Felicia's due (cutting it right to the wire, huh?). And b), because the flooring guys won't let me even open the door to take a quick snapshot, because I might let in a stray fleck of dust (or an overly enthusiastic airheaded golden retriever) to muss up their satiny finish before it's had a chance to set. (Ah, I just love the smell of polyurethane in the morning...) Looks like you'll get pictures of the baby room about the same time you get pictures of, well, the baby.

Who, before you ask, is still taking his own sweet time, thankyouverymuch. We're now 1-2 cm dilated and about 60% effaced (as of Wednesday), and not a single, solitary contraction so far. Felicia opened up her schedule for appointments on Monday, she's so sure nothing's going to happen before then. (Which could cause Jen, her medical assistant, some real headaches if Joshua changes his mind and pops out early...) My lovely, irrepressible, ever-so-slightly-neurotic wife had her busiest month ever in March, in terms of deliveries, surgeries, and billing... when she was nine months pregnant. Not only is she not letting the pregnancy slow her down, it looks like from a purely financial standpoint, we should get pregnant more often!

So... back to what I started with, ButzMom's long-anticipated arrival. She and Mike landed in Portland mid-day Wednesday and had a nice, leisurely drive down to our lovely corner of the state all Wednesday afternoon, and got here in the early evening. At which point practically the first words out of their mouths were to exclaim over how gorgeous the landscaping was, which was balm to my contractor-bruised little heart. (I'll post pictures of the new forest and the Great Wall of Cohen soon; at the moment, it's snowing - yes, snowing - so any pics I took wouldn't do justice to the sheer awe and majesty of what we've accomplished with our little parcel of heaven. Ha.) And the next words out of their mouths were to comment on how beautiful Felicia looks as a little preggie lady. And then their next twenty or thirty words were all aimed at getting Gimli off them, since he was doing his best to scramble up their legs and sit on top of their heads, all 75 pounds of him.

As one would expect, knowing ButzMom, I've already gotten substantial reinforcements in the kitchen duties, and we'll be entirely assured of eating well and often over the next few weeks. Unfortunately, since the baby hasn't actually arrived yet, we don't have quite enough for Grandma Jo to do yet - the chaos hasn't yet begun, so other than futzing around with dishes and laundry and food, we can't put her fully to work at this point. Felicia and I ourselves aren't high-maintenance enough to justify a full-time live-in Grandma, and although Gimli would happily put her to work petting, and playing, and throwing bones, and petting again, and otherwise doing 24-7 puppy spoilage duties, I don't think that's what she came all this way to do. And somehow she didn't perk up quite the way I expected when I mentioned that we still have a lot of trees to plant, nor did she leap into the idea of pouring concrete, or laying irrigation pipe. Hm.

So here we are, waiting for Godot. Er, Joshua. Whatever.

Nesting, Nesting, and More Nesting...

A question I've been meaning to ask Maytag: why is it that no matter how long you set the dryer to run, the load is always damp on the first try?

Other great mysteries I've been pondering, as I try to blast through all the little things that we need to do to get ready for this little Tasmanian Devil who's about to land in our laps:

1) How does one keep all those thimble-sized baby socks together? (I see a train wreck looming on that one, with fifteen thousand singleton socks wandering around in the nursery dresser, each about the size of the tip of my pinky.)

2) What alternate uses can one find for surplus baby washcloths (of which we have enough to pave our driveway in plush polyester)? I'm thinking, like, maybe you could dry off a car with them, since they're a lot cheaper than chamois... though you'd have to sew together about, oh, thirty of them to get something manly-man sized. (And God help you if your buddies ever found out what you were waxing your ride with.)

3) Is it really possible that one little 8-ish-pound critter, who isn't even capable of independent motion much less making mudpies or eating fingerpaint (yet), could truly need so many clothes? I mean, short of putting on a fashion show, how is this little guy possibly going to go through so many onesies and socks and things?

Clearly, I've been doing Baby Laundry this morning. Not sure at what point it became a philosophical exercise - probably somewhere in the midst of folding all these things, which is a lot like making origami, actually. (Fold carefully, using only your pinky fingertips, tongue sticking out in concentration... my kingdom for a jeweler's loupe, so I could see what I'm doing...)

I'm beginning to see how these families with 13 kids actually happen - the parents had all these baby clothes and just hated to see them go to waste, so they kept popping out little ones to keep those onesies occupied. Tempting. I'll have to see what Felicia thinks about that, as a plan.

This week has been all about nesting. In other words, after 39 weeks and a few days thrown in after that brief moment of glory when we got ourselves into this mess in the first place, it finally penetrated my dinosaur brain that yes, we really are going to have a baby, and yes, I really am going to have to figure out how to take care of this little bugger after Felicia goes back to work and leaves me at home holding the diaper bag. Once I had this brilliant epiphany, and after I was done breathing into a paper bag and my heartrate was back to something approaching normal, I went into a blizzard of preparation. Which, in my little world, included some things that were fairly predictable (moving the bassinet and changing table into our bedroom, so Felicia's mom doesn't have us wandering in to change poopy diapers at 3am while she's here over the next few weeks)... and some things that would probably make sense only to my so-called brain, and maybe a few other similarly addled would-be and have-been ever-so-slightly-crazed dads-to-be (like calling all the landscaping contractors who are working on the house and setting in motion a flurry of activity, to make sure the baby has a lot of neato trees and a freshly redone front porch to come home to).

I just didn't expect Baby Laundry to be such a logistical and intellectual challenge... We may be in real trouble, here.

I Married a Cruel, Cruel Woman

So I'm not even halfway through my first cup of coffee this morning (and am therefore legally braindead in sixteen states), when Felicia walks out of the bedroom yelling "Hunnnney! Hunnnney"!"

As I always do, being the well-trained husband that I am (!!), I come running immediately. "What's the matter?"

"I think I just broke my water! Look, it's like I peed my pants!"

Sure enough, there's this jigungo wet spot all down the front of her scrub bottoms. "And I think I'm having contractions! I can't believe it!"

(boggle)

(boggle)

And then while I'm standing there for a good, oh, thirty seconds, gaping like a fish, she starts just ever so slightly... smirking. And little alarm bells start going off in my head.

"Oh. It's April Fools Day. Right. You didn't really break your water, did you?"

"I was going to do it to you at 3 o'clock in the morning," says my lovely, caring, oh-so-hilarious little wife. "And I wasn't going to tell you about it until we got in the car and got halfway down the driveway."

Humph.

All I can say is, it's a good thing, since she hasn't even packed her hospital bag yet. And she still has grungy feet.

So nyah.

Baby on hold, pending pedicure

Another week, another OB appointment, and in spite of much continued head-butting of his mom's cervix, little Josh still thinks the Real World (TM) is best viewed through a 1 cm peephole from his nice, warm, cozy spot. Which is pretty bright, actually, considering.

Felicia, for her part, has her own perfectly sensible reasons to hold off just a bit longer. Number one, she has things to do before His Poopiness arrives - surgeries, deliveries, nesting and more nesting, and hopefully a certain amount of sleeping (while she still can). And number two, as a matter of principle, she refuses to go through labor with messy toenails. So until she gets a nice, relaxing pedicure, sometime this weekend, she's in no particular rush. Well... no rush other than the usual, that is, i.e., being more or less done with feeling tired all the time, having perpetual backaches, being contantly hungry and then not being able to eat more than a thimblefull at one sitting, yadayada.

Meanwhile, the puppy and I pretty much just try to stay out of the way and do our best to hide the fact that we really, truly, honestly have no clue whatsoever what we're getting ourselves into. I ask him, "Gimli, do you have any idea how our lives are about to change?" And he looks at me with those soulful puppy eyes and says, "Woof." And I say, "Exactly, me neither. But if you think your poop stinks, you'd better get ready, because you're about to lose your title as the Head Stinky around here."

(Give them your best mournful look, Gim. Good dog.)

Welcome to Joshua's Spot

Cousin Boog tells me that Blogging is an essential element of modern parenting, right up there with changing diapers and knowing all the verses to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" - including the ones on the flip side played backwards.

So here I am. I figured I'd try it out before little Joshua decides he's finally ready to join the Real World, such as it is, and I lose all capacity for coherent thought for the next, oh, eighteen years or so.

No, Mom, we don't have a baby yet. We don't even have a baby *room* yet, in fact, since the floor in the nursery is still all torn up and waiting for the flooring guy to come in on Monday and fill the house with sawdust and polyurethane fumes. We do have lots of other stuff, however, including a crib, a bassinet, a car seat (now installed in the backseat of the otherwise big manly manly Chuka Trucka - hopefully correctly!), fifteen rubber duckies, more onesies than you can shake a stick at, and enough baby washcloths to wallpaper the office with. If raising a healthy, intelligent, well-adjusted child is all about being well-equipped with plush, stamp-sized washcloths, we're all set. Bring on the poop!

Felicia, meanwhile, is still stuck somewhere between "I can't wait to get this baby out of there," "I can't have a baby now, I've got surgeries scheduled," and "When can I get my epidural - my vagina's scared!" Mine is too. At his last ultrasound, at 37 weeks, about ten days and many meals ago, "little" Joshua was weighing in at 6 pounds 11 ounces... plus or minus a pound or so. Right on track to come out, assuming he goes to term, somewhere between Andre the Giant and Godzilla. Felicia's dream of having a nice, neat, compact little 6-pound baby seems to have passed by her in the night somewhere, and didn't even wave on its way by. And my poor wife knows *way* too much about all the woes the pelvic floor is heir to, and has a very healthy imagination. These last couple weeks, I think, are going to be quite... interesting. I measure how close she is not by how frequent her contractions are (she hasn't really had any yet), but by "oys" per minute (OPMs). Yesterday, she was at about 1 OPM - when she gets to 5, I predict we'll be ready to rock.

She's the cutest little pregnant lady there ever was, though - admittedly, I'm a bit biased, but take a look for yourself!

My favorite quote of the pregnancy thus far, from early last week when Dr. Medley told Felicia she was 1 cm dilated: "Wow, look, I'm one-tenth of the way there, and it didn't hurt a bit!"

We may be in real trouble, here.