Month: November 2010

We took last week off, partially to wait for the baby and partially because there was snow and ice and school was canceled. It was an excellent week, though the wife had to adjust since she thought she would get some quiet alone time, and instead she got a full house every day except Monday. As the week progressed, though, I know she started to feel guilty that she was already burning through her maternity time and that the baby obviously had a different time table. Now here we are, starting to burn through a second week of leave, and I’m heading back to work while we wait, since I only have, at best, two weeks off for when the baby gets here. I could rant and rave about how nice it would be to get paid maternity and paternity time, about how I feel like our country doesn’t really support people who want to have babies, even those responsible families who support themselves … but I won’t rant, and I won’t rave. But it would be nice.

Yesterday we had a nice quiet day to ourselves. The rain cleared and I took Georgie to the park. We haven’t been in awhile, since we’ve been going for walks through the woods instead. The park is nice because it’s much more of an endurance contest for the dog, and when we get home he’s thoroughly worn out. It also helps wear down his nails, since we spend a good ten minutes, at least, throwing the ball around in the basketball court and he gets to run around on pavement. At home, on a friend’s advice, we had some wine, and kissed a lot. We played cribbage while we waited, and listened to some of the birth music we’d picked out, and tried our best to be patient. From about 6:30 on that evening there were some pretty good contractions, but they eased and we went to sleep.

For my part, I’ve stopped asking the wife if “anything exciting is happening”, because it just annoys her and makes her feel pressured. If I ask her how she’s doing, I try to do it in an upbeat and encouraging tone that implies that I simply care about her well-being and want her to be comfortable. Which I think annoys her slightly less. I told her last night that, at this point, I would stop asking, since the baby obviously wasn’t getting the hint, and just wait for her to tell me if anything changed. Obviously baby has its own timeline, and even though I suspect that it might be a bit lazy, baby’s calling the shots right now and won’t be rushed.

Anyway, the wine and kissing wasn’t all that bad, effective or not, so maybe we’ll try that again tonight.

I think it’s important to be thankful every day, as much as possible, and for the most part, there’s a lot to be thankful for. That said, I have nothing against picking one day to be particularly thankful, and anyway, if it weren’t for Thanksgiving I don’t know if I’d ever eat pumpkin pie, and that’s definitely something to be thankful for.

We spent Thanksgiving Day with the wife’s parents, who live just a mile away, and it was one of the more enjoyable Thanksgivings I remember in awhile. We were off the hook for bringing anything, since we didn’t know if we were going to make it or not. The plan was that if the baby came then I’d go over and get some plates to go, but as it happens the baby is still hanging out so we got to fill up on turkey and stuffing and good company. Good job, baby.

Of course, now that we got to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner it’s time for you to stop laying about, baby. Tuesday was the “not before” date, and you got past that admirably, and Thursday was the official due date, and you let us enjoy a nice family dinner. But now it’s Friday, baby, and I feel like maybe you lack motivation, or maybe you’re just lazy. Whatever the case may be, we’re getting impatient waiting for you, so really, any time now. Today would be fine. Really.

So today is Friday, and all the snow has melted, and it’s raining. Mr. Ten was disappointed that the snow is disappearing, but we told him that we almost never get snow in November, anyway, and it was surely a good sign of things to come in terms of a cold, snowy winter. And since he’s into technicalities, we pointed out that it is still autumn, after all, to which he replied that winter should really just start on the first day that it snows, and that summer, in turn, should begin on the first day that it’s really sunny and hot.

Sometimes it’s hard to argue with ten-year-old logic, even when said logic is pretty ridiculous.

While we spend today waiting for that lazy baby, we’ll go out for a walk in the woods with Georgie (our 1 1/2 year old German Shorthair Pointer), and we’ll finally get around to raking the leaves in the yard, and maybe I’ll even borrow the neighbor’s ladder so I can clear out the gutters, and the wife will do some weeding and, for the most part, we’ll keep busy. But really we’ll be looking at our watches and saying “Gee, I really wish that baby would get with the program already.”

I mean really, baby. Any time now.