Christmas Eve

Before we all get too excited, calling this "Christmas Eve" does not necessarily mean that tomorrow is Baby Day. I got an email today with someone telling me that coming home from work to your wife and baby made every day feel like Christmas. I responded that it made sense as every day now feels like Christmas Eve: I can't focus, I can't concentrate, I can't do anything to take my mind off of the fact that any day now we're going to head off to the hospital. And there's not even some crap bowl game to occupy my time. I just time contractions on my phone.

Speaking of contractions, they've sort of been all over the place - but getting closer together. A few days ago they were 15 minutes apart, then 12 minutes, then 10 minutes. Last night they were running about 60-90 seconds in duration, and about 7-7.5 minutes apart. I could have sworn that - back in Birthin' Class - they said to go ahead and get ready to come to the hospital when they were 6-8 minutes apart for two hours. So I called the on-call doctor at Baptist, and was told that, no, wait until they're about five minutes apart for an hour. Off to bed.

So this evening, Kami was running about 6m 45s apart, and I went off and took a shower, washed my hair, and prepared for the impending two-day trip to the hospital. Except they slowed down, back to about eight minutes. So it's like the present was brought out from under the tree, laid down in my lap, and then picked back up and put back under the tree. (And, similar to Christmas Eve, I won't be able to sleep tonight. I was so sure that we were in for a long night that I made myself a quite large cup of coffee. Good thing I'm trying to finish a couple of different books.)

Anyhow, we're pretty much ready for Ms. Thang to come on out. Over the weekend we had to pick up a few things from Babies R Us. We got a sound machine for the nursery - which I am tempted to buy a second one so I can fall asleep to the soothing sounds of the ocean. However, if someone decides to be funny and turn on the rotating, glowing monkeys in a tree, then the Night Terrors will surely come. We also picked up a new bassinet mattress and sheet, because we were fairly certain that the sheet should not crumple up the bassinet mattress so that it looked more like Angus had alligatored the covers.

Oh, you're not familiar with alligatoring? Angus is quite good at it - I even saw him do it one. He starts by laying against your leg on top of the covers. Then, using the wedge of covers against your leg, he rolls, turning away from the outside of your leg, sometimes grabbing the covers with his teeth, so that it separates the covers from the leg, to the point where you wake up shivering, looking at a smiling, sleeping dog. So we bought a new bassinet mattress and sheet, and it fit much better than the other one.

We got blankets upon blankets, but we found ourselves walking through the blanket section, when I saw one that made me burst into tears. It was pink (honestly, we never pegged ourselves as such huge fans of the color pink, but Emsley's closet is like Strawberry Shortcake and a Care Bear got into a knife fight. Can't get enough pink.), but in the corner was embroidered, "Beautiful Like My Mommy." And I just couldn't handle it. Burst into tears right there in the middle of Babies R Us. (I bet it hasn't happened before. I bet I wasn't the first person to cry in Babies R Us that day. That hour, even.)

I'm sure I've mentioned this before but Kami is absolutely beautiful (like there was any doubt). From the moment I decided to propose, which will be 10 years ago this coming New Year's Eve, I knew she would make a wonderful mother. It took longer than we had expected; deep in my heart I questioned whether this day would come. I just cannot thank God enough for our experience - the good and the bad - and for Kami. Emsley will be beautiful, just like her mommy. Now if you'll pardon me, I have a blanket to buy.