We are in the waiting weeks, and everyone is watching the calendar. I expected to hate this time, to feel big and ungainly and impatient, but I'm finding that I enjoy it more than all the time before. While I do feel big and ungainly, it's less of an aggravation and more of an amusement. Every morning, I'm surprised again to discover I can find some kind of equilibrium, moving this different body through space. This full-moon belly gives me reason to be still, to move more slowly and be deliberate, and it won't last forever — a handful of days, a week or two at most.
People keep asking if we are ready, as if having your first baby is like planning a road trip to Arizona. It's a kind but silly question, and I never know exactly what to say. You can prepare to a point, but it's a Rumsfeldian situation, with known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. We're approaching it more as an exercise in mobile-making: improvising and adjusting until the necessary pieces hang in some sort of balance. And of course, the whole thing has to move with the wind.
Speaking of mobiles, we put one up in the baby's room this week: tiny wooden Viking ships with paper sails that bob and dip with slightest breath of air. Watching it move is one of my favorite ways to pass the time.
In other news of baby preparedness, we've re-upped our subscriptions to a number of printed periodicals (hoping, foolishly perhaps, that our kid's earliest memories of us won't involve ambient screen-glow), bought a better camera, stashed batches of blueberry muffins in the freezer, boiled bottles, gotten car seats installed and laid in Prosecco for celebratory toasts. I also have extra jars of maraschino cherries in the cupboard for emergency hot fudge sundaes and stacks of freshly laundered PJs for me, Sean and the kiddo. So the important stuff is as ready as it can be.
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Snack of the moment: fresh cherries and icy carafes of lemon water. I am missing shoes with laces and pants with buttons, but it is only a matter of time.
