So this is how it's going to be.

[I know, I owe a monthly update, and this isn't it. But doesn't it tell you a lot about Chloë's current status?]

I set the girls up to play in the backyard this evening while I worked on dinner. I opened the sandbox and filled the water table, and provided two of the large buckets and fed them an equal number of raspberries. Then I went inside and opened the window. I chopped tomatoes and rolled pita bread, checking the window frequently. I loved having the kids playing outside while I worked without somebody wailing or clinging to my leg.

"I need flowers!" Chloë called to me when I went outside to cut parsley.

"Well, you know where they are," I said, pointing to the garden behind the garage, where there are a couple of marigold bushes that Chloë has picked from plenty of times.

"But those are marigolds, not flowers!" she said.

"Marigolds are flowers."

She said nothing, which surprised but pleased me, and I figured she'd accepted my word on it. I went back inside.

Presently, I saw Maia head toward the garden. I mentioned this to Eric as I finished chopping. "Should one of us head out there?" he said.

"Yeah, I'll go when I finish this." I suited action to word and went outside. But as I did, Maia came back. "Good timing," I told her.

"Mama," Chloë called. "I need help getting flowers. Maia didn't bring me any."

I looked at her, and then at Maia, and then back at her. "Did you send your sister to pick flowers for you?"

"Yes," she said, as Maia nodded vigorously. "So I need you to help me."

I went inside (after walking her to the garden) and reported this to Eric, who said, "She finally actually has her own minion."

She's always known

One of Chloë's new words I haven't been able to figure out is "Mimi." She says it often, but it doesn't seem to refer to anything--sometimes she seems to mean me, sometimes Eric, sometimes random other things. Her cousin calls their Aunt Michelle Mimi, but we don't so it's unlikely that's what she means.

In the meantime, Eric hooked up a spare yoga strap to a laundry basket today and pulled Chloë around in it. This was a severe mistake. Not because she didn't like it. Because she did, and when he stopped, she screamed for more. So he got a lot of exercise today.

He was telling me this story when I got home, adding, "'Pull me again, minion! What are you waiting for?!'" I laughed, and turned to her and said, "Say 'minion.'"

"Mimi," she said.

Careful what you wish for

We lay in bed the other morning, Chloe gnawing on my cheek (everything goes into the mouth nowadays). "Are you giving me a kiss?" I asked her, and pulled her off, making a sucking noise. She looked delighted. "I'll give you a kiss!" I said, and planted a loud one on her cheek.

She looked even more delighted, and went back to sucking on my cheek. "Everything goes in the mouth," Eric remarked.

"I wonder why my cheek," I said. "Instead of something pointier, like my chin or my nose."

She pulled off and lunged for my chin.

We're headed for Seattle this afternoon. It'll be Chloe's first plane flight, and I'm hoping she takes after her mom and not her dad when it comes to flying. She'll be wearing her "Going to Grandma's" onesie (at least until she spits up on it) and her Santa hat, ready to charm the Shafer side of her family as she's charmed the Snyder side. Watch out, Shafers. The overlord is coming to conquer you.

Meet your new overlord

Chloë Leeja Snyder
July 23, 2009
8 lb., 3 oz
21"
Details, better pictures, and first steps toward world dominion to come.

...Go

We're now in the single digits on the countdown to our due date. Not that I necessarily think that means anything. I am officially the most boring prenatal patient in the world ("It's such a joy to read your chart!" Chris exclaimed at my checkup today, but I was not deceived: forget yawning, she was trying not to snore) which suggests, at least to me, that I'll be exceedingly average, which means a few days late. Anyone want to start a betting pool?

The nursery is now ready, to the point where I've actually opened the bottle of powder. (It's pure cornstarch but it smells just like any other baby powder. I suppose they do that so you know it's baby powder.) I've even finished the sort-of-bumper for the crib:

(That's really only about half of it; the mattress lowers as the baby gets older and more interested in climbing, so the bumper continues below the current mattress level.)

We've packed our bag, as much of it as we can. The newborn clothes are washed and put away. I've finally programmed the midwives' phone number into my phone. My maternity leave paperwork is ready to be turned in after two small questions (Eric insists that I am not in fact an idiot, so the necessary conclusion is that this paperwork is exceedingly pregnancy-unfriendly). (Though Eric would say that anyway, as his sense of self-preservation is becoming more and more finely honed these days.)

I am in fact in the middle of making a quilt to match the bumper, but I'm not actually concerned about finishing that before the baby comes, since it's not like she's hurting for blankets. Except for a small personal project (code name Shoelace) that I'd like to finish, I think we're actually...ready. Physically, anyway. Eric seems to be mentally ready as well. I don't know that I am. But it probably means something that when the baby pokes her little feet into my upper belly, I've started telling her there's a lot more room on the outside.

Ready, set

I'd been feeling reasonably good about how much we'd gotten done to prepare for L.E.O.'s coming. But Friday night we had dinner with some friends, including four potential fellow trusted lieutenants, and one of them asked, "So are you ready? Is the carseat installed? Are your bags packed? Is the crib set up? Do you have clean clothes?"

This naturally threw me into a panic, and as a result this weekend we did four loads of baby laundry, including sheets and blankets so that we could make up the crib. We wrote a list for the hospital bag. (Most of what we'll want to put in it we're still using.) We wrote a list of people we'll need to send announcements to (designing them and addressing envelopes ahead of time seems like a good idea). And we installed the carseat bases and mirrors. I do not have work paperwork turned in yet, but that should happen this week, too.

We realize, of course, that this activity has guaranteed that L.E.O. will arrive late. There are still a couple of other tasks we want to finish before she gets here, and I'm seriously considering leaving them undone to increase the chances that she'll come earlier, but I'm not so sure she's that easily manipulable.

What to expect when you're expecting to spawn the next evil overlord

I called up the doctor's office today to ask after the results of my blood pregnancy test. The lab took blood last Tuesday. They promised results within half a day. I heard nothing on Wednesday, and when I called the lab, the lab said, "We can only release the results to your doctor," which is ridiculous, and the doctor's office was closed on Friday.

So I called. "It's positive," the woman I spoke with said, and I said, "Excellent," but I wasn't as excited as she was perhaps hoping, since I took a home pregnancy test a week ago and we've told our parents (and one cousin, because she's my Bev) already. I'm approximately five and a half weeks pregnant, which puts the due date very approximately July 30. We'll have better numbers once I go in for my first appointment. In the meantime, we're discussing what we'll do with our new little overlord (mostly in tones of "Ohmigod we're going to be parents what were we thinking") when he or she gets here, assuming all goes well. Darth Vader would be a great Halloween costume for a baby, wouldn't it?