34 Weeks

Yes, yes, I know, I know. I'm getting dangerously close to the point where I simply cannot go a day without at least posting that yes, there is no baby yet and all is well with my womb. I'm sorry. It's just that the baby's sock drawer is not going to repeatedly arrange and rearrange itself, y'all.

I've also been blowing my writerly load via dozens of long emails to my husband, since we've learned that we are only allowed to argue about politics via electronic methods. Otherwise we get a tad...shrill with each other, as during major election years our usually happy existence as independents ends, and we retreat to our separate party corners and hiss and spit and furiously send each other links that SO TOTALLY prove that the other person is a complete fucking idiot.

And while I usually just end up defaulting to the surefire "I am never sleeping with you again unless you pull your head at least PARTWAY out of your ass," I'm thinking that's not going to be particularly effective this time.

I mean, check OUT this slammin' physique. Wouldn't YOU be okay with letting the Bush tax cuts expire as planned in 2010 for a chance at that ass?

That's what I thought, suckahs. (And that IS a maternity tank. Those extra four inches of visible fishbelly are so fierce.)

If current "plans" hold -- and oh, I do so love using the word "plans" in regard to ANYTHING birth-related, since it makes me think of "birth plans" and how all the pregnancy books list that as something one should pack for the hospital ("darling, can you please fetch me my chapstick, Yanni CD and seven-page birth plan from the suitcase? It's in the front pocket. No, that's the back-up copy, I mean the one I had laminated.") --  I'll be having this baby in about five weeks.

And...we feel ready, more or less. Oh sure, we still haven't gotten all the various baby gear down from the attic yet and I'm still only assuming that the car seat is where I think I left it, and a full inventory of Noah's infant hand-me-downs reveals a horrifying shortage of 3-6 month sized feetie jammies but...eh. We're ready. We've been gripped with crazy baby fever over the past few weeks, which is convenient! What timing!

Whenever we see someone out and about with an infant, our conversations go something like this:

NOM, I say. SMUSHY BABY THERE MMMM.

GOOD, Jason says, SQUAWKY NEWBORN CHOMP.

Then we nod and go back to gnawing on bones and bitching about Geico ads. (And short- vs. long-term solutions to the energy crisis and Iraq timetables and OH MY GOD SARAH PALIN.)

I'm not sure when it happened -- the 3D ultrasound, the crazy visible kicks and rolls and undulations of mah belleh, the discovery of baby socks that look like shoes, the temporary threat that things might in fact NOT be as perfect and surefire as we thought? I don't know. But here we are, at 34 weeks, and we are finally able to have a conversation about The Baby that doesn't involve a heaping hot dose of TERROR and WHAT HAVE WE DONE? Undo! Ctrl-Z!

My only frustration is that we don't have a name. (Jason changed his mind. Don't even get me started. He changed his mind but has not offered a single usable alternative and WOW, YOU MIGHT EVEN SAY HE FLIP-FLOPPED, MUCH LIKE A CERTAIN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE.) (Okay, I'll stop now.) Jason wants to name the baby after he's here, in the hospital. Which is fine, except that I secretly continue to use "the name" in my head and I seriously doubt I'll be able to think of him as anything else, but I have decided to exert my energy elsewhere. The aforementioned sock drawer. The search for the perfect coming-home outfit, which is driving Jason crazy because I think I have rejected every pair of blue feetie jammies in the tri-state area as being either 1) Not special enough, 2) Too frou-frou, 3) Not boyish enough, 4) Too boyish, oh my God, my newborn is not coming home clad in MONSTER TRUCKS, and 5) I dunno, I just don't think raccoons are the statement I'd like to make on the birth announcements. Don't you have something in a teddy bear motif?

And...Jesus, I should stop before I make our household sound ANY MORE INSANE.

Quick! Look! Pet photos!

Way to keep it classy there, everybody.