Passing the time

Girlchild is moving around a lot these days, but the bumps still aren't strong enough to feel from the outside. Plus, she seems to stop whenever a hand is put over the source of her poking. Stubborn like her brother? And maybe her mama—I hear nasty rumors sometimes that I'm pig-headed. I hope Alex gets to feel her soon; he's been claiming since she was about the size of a peanut that he can feel her head when he touches my tummy. I never had the heart to tell him no, my dear, that's just Mommy's gut. The movements are so reassuring, though, and that's what I remember from before. Having that frequent, multiple-times-daily physical reassurance that she's OK in there helps me in my efforts to make my old frenemy Anxiety shut it, already.

Steven put up the crib this weekend, of his own accord and without my having to lift a finger. And he kept the cursing to a bare minimum, even though there was an impromptu trip to Lowe's in the middle of the project and the drawer that's supposed to slide into the bottom of the frame flat refuses to be slid. If baby came home tomorrow we'd be 74% ready for her, at least physically. Which means that, roughly twenty-seven years from now, when I finally give birth, we should be all set.

So now begins the interminable wait. The long stretch of no concrete milestones, with the finish line still too far distant to make out without binoculars. We are over the hump though, more than halfway there, and I still get to sleep a lot. A lot a lot. I guess now there's nothing to do but enjoy my sleep and my Only and my spit-up-free existence, to occasionally panic when all's too still for too long in my belly, to play the eating-for-two card, to bask in the rosy, rewritten memories of what having a newborn is really like. And occasionally to get all mushy when I encounter a rack of tiny, flowered sundresses, knowing full well that anything but sleepers and onesies is impractical in the beginning but not caring one iota. This is fantasy time. Gimme it.

I adore my husband, but I do hope he'll refrain from making this creepy face this time. Note the frozen semblance of what might be a smile in some improbable parallel universe, with the underlying visible effort to avoid puking on my head. (It's shocking, when there's suddenly a baby in the room.)