For the first time in my life, I just signed a form on the line marked “Signature of Parent/Guardian”.
I was confused for about 10 seconds while I wondered “Why would one of my parents need to sign this?”
Oh, right, I remember… that’ll be me.
To crib from Russ (Congrats Sauves!), I want to write a little more about this whole adventure than I have been. It may seem hokey or premature, but I do want to leave a record so that our child can one day look back and see what a nerd his or her dad really was, and how intense this whole process really is.
The first news is they changed Heather’s due date. We were due April 16th and now, based on their precise measurements, they pushed us back to April 22nd. This is exactly in line with what we’ve thought all along, so it didn’t come as a shock or anything. It’s an extra week of waiting and an extra week of everything else, but we always knew that the 22nd was more accurate.
Relief has arrived in the form of no more morning sickness. Seriously, this pregnancy has been really hard on Heather, and I was genuinely hopeful that the ongoing nausea would eventually go away. Well, it finally has. It cruised right into her second trimester, but faded away in the last week or two.
I find myself becoming more and more anxious, not in the sense that I am feeling stress, but in the sense that I just can’t wait. I can’t wait until we get to find out if we’re having a boy or a girl. I can’t wait until we actually have the baby. I don’t think I’ve ever been as excited about something as I am about our child, but there’s not much I can really do in these months before the delivery. Apparently it is the size of a baked potato now. Isn’t that the same size as an uncooked potato?.
And at the same time, there is plenty to do and buy. To help with our many purchasing decisions, we were recommended Baby Bargains by a friend, and so far, it hasn’t disappointed. We still have several months before we will need to start stocking up, but this book is a big help, especially since the author is willing to say “Um, don’t buy [this thing] at all. You’ll never use it.”
It looks like we’re going to put a wall up to close off our existing office/den. It doesn’t sound like much fun to me, but I have lots of expert help. I am honestly relieved to be converting the space, since the office was never more than a big desk on which my crap accumulated. We got a new computer, moved a bunch of old junk into storage, and in a month or so, we’ll have a room–with a door–for the baby.
Oh, and here’s a line you don’t usually see in this space… Stay tuned for the sex!
I’ve been away for too long. Writing the blog has always seemed to come in spurts, and I find that I very quickly become bored with the design, my posts, and just the whole process. The glut of information available to read has very quickly made my interaction with the blogosphere nearly 100% one-way. Sure, I try to comment now and then instead of lurking via RSS, but I’ve been reduced to a shell of the blogger and commenter I once was. I could trot out the tired old “I’m too busy” excuse, but I think my interest just waned over the last few months. Like anything else, if you don’t make a change every now and then, it can get boring.
So, I started with a fresh Wordpress install, imported my posts and comments, and picked a template. This is version 4.0, with 1.0 and 2.0 being hosted elsewhere and version 3.0 being my first foray into Wordpress. I’ll probably keep tweaking the design and still have a lot of work to do cleaning up tags and categories, but I’m happy to have the blog back up and running.
Not to bury the lede, but the big news in my life at the moment is that we’re having a baby. I can’t really describe the feeling except to say that we’re thrilled, anxious, and in complete awe over the fact that we’re going to become parents. Never before have I been so humbled by something planned. Heather is due April 16th, 2009. About ten days ago, I stood in a small doctor’s office in Dunwoody and strained to hear the heartbeat of our literally nascent child. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like that in 27 years, and I know that the wonders are just beginning.