Ready and Not.

Baby girl is officially full term plus one day now, which means that prescription I never got filled for stopping contractions can be tossed. Bring on the pain! I have a feeling she’s going to be stubborn and unpredictable, though, and what’s more that she’s going to make me work up until the very last minute because I can’t conceive of much less appealing—and I’m an expect-the-worster from way back.

The long weekend taught me that “cankles” are actually made worse by too much sitting; I had almost no swelling whatsoever the entire weekend, which I spent cleaning and walking and otherwise doing. Which means, by loose association, that being at work is hazardous to my health. I knew it.

Alex has decided that my going to the hospital to have the baby is simply out of the question. He’ll miss me too much, and that’s that. He wanted me to promise that I wouldn’t go, and because I was not emotionally prepared at the moment for a tearful scene but I also have an aversion to outright lying to appease the kid, I mumbled some cop-out like “We’ll see,” and distracted him with tooth-brushing and bedtime-story-reading. Could be he’ll be fine when the time comes; could trigger trauma that will have him in therapy for the next twenty years.

We’ll see, indeed.

And it could be he was just worn the heck out from a day of playing hard and launching rockets and baking brownies and making a conscious effort to do everything his dad was doing at any given moment. Plus, at one point while he was grilling the ribs, Steven had him running laps around the backyard to burn off some of the energy that was coming off him in waves of pure mania.

And then there was the hair-washing incident from hell, complete with a near-slip, which resulted in his choking on a mouthful of still-being-chewed pork rib, which I’m sure set him back both in the hair-washing phobia and in the misplaced belief that Mommy reacts appropriately to things sometimes.

I'm hoping for a speedy week and some progress toward D-Day and a better attitude and less back pain and relief from this internal bruised feeling. Also for an immediate and generous infusion of patience, as Alex stabbed me in my guilt zone by saying, “Maybe when your tummy goes back to normal you’ll feel better and be in a better mood.”

From the mouths of babes come things that make you want to relinquish your mama badge, crawl under the covers, and sleep till their predictions come true.