The Express Train to Babyville

I know it's been a week or so since we last spoke, dear reader, and for that, I apologize. Let's recap, shall we?

Our respective mothers flew in from Texas last Friday, as it was Baby Shower weekend. This means that Thursday night we were up quite late doing laundry, cleaning up, and I put two coats of paint on the wall in the nursery where her crib will be. Once the nursery decorations are finished, I'll post a picture. For now, it sort of looks like an F1 tornado hit a Babies R Us.

During one of those showers, my mom and I stayed behind and tried to put together the crib. She's good at that sort of thing. I'm not. It still took us over two hours, and I need to put the stabilizer bar on it because I left it in the car and spent 25 minutes staring at two screws and silently pleading with them to fit. I may, or may not, have put Gunther in the crib to see if the mattress and springs would fall through the bottom. (It didn't.)

It was great having The Moms in town, as they took turns getting weepy with Kami, and telling her how beautiful she is - which is, of course, true. After the showers, we unloaded the car and arranged baby clothes by size, washed them, and hung them up in the closet. It's pretty cool.

Then the Bassinet came, and we put that together. There's an mp3 dock on the bottom, which will be awesome as the sweet sounds of Rammstein will gently rock her to sleep. But it was then that I realized that we are now on the Express Train to Babyville. 36 weeks ago, having Emsley come - though we didn't know her name at the time - was a very abstract thought. Kind of an, "Oh, I know she's coming, but it's down the road. There are a lot of things to get through before she arrives." Now, all of those "things" have come and gone, and now we're waiting, and I'm getting antsy. For example:

At church on Sunday, we were about to be dismissed when everyone was invited to stand for the closing blessing. Keep in mind, I had spent the previous week loading up clothes we don't wear anymore to take to Goodwill. And we donated, honestly, between 300-500 pounds of books to the library. And I know that getting rid of books doesn't sound like something we would do, but we are big library supporters, and honestly, if I haven't read that Salman Rushdie book that I've had on every nightstand I've owned for ten years, then I can just get it from the library when the mood strikes me. That did some damage to my dodgy left knee. So standing to be dismissed, I needed some help getting to my feet. I put my hand down to my right where Kami was sitting, and slopped it right in the middle of a huge, cold wet spot.

I do not know what broken water feels like. Looking back, I knew that it wouldn't be ice cold. But in my heart I was thinking, "Oh crap her water broke! Thank God our moms are here! She needs me to give her a piggy back ride to the car! And I can get to Baptist Hospital in 15 minutes from here!" All of those thoughts went through my mind in a matter of milliseconds. So I completely freaked out, gasped, coughed, even croaked out a "WHATISTHAT" at an inappropriate volume. Kami started laughing - her water bottle had leaked on the seat.

So I'm getting jumpy, and it's not going to get any better.