Getting in gear

There is a baby swing in our office. This is freaking us out.

I got back from my Seattle trip yesterday, bringing a big suitcase full of awesome baby stuff that my family gave us. (And gift cards, for ease of packing, which I appreciated.) I would describe them but talking about how extremely adorable every outfit and blanket was and how many neat little things were on the diaper cake (a phrase I never understood before) will probably get very boring very quickly. Suffice to say, we are very grateful and very pleased and very, very alarmed at the ever-growing realization that we're going to need all this stuff for an actual tiny human.

Angie and Matt gave us a Papasan baby swing a few weeks ago and while I was gone, Eric brought it to our house (it had been left at the mothers' for a while). We decided today that it made no sense to wash and put away the new outfits and blankets and washcloths now, since ideally we should wash them just before L.E.O. is born, which is (if all goes well) still thirteen weeks away. But I was itching to do baby prep/nesting-type activities, and I able to be annoying about it because I was home for the day (I took a sick day because I had a doctor appointment and was figuring I'd have jet lag; all is well, though my previous doctor's office apparently never did the state-mandated gonorrhea/chlamydia screen they were supposed to, so we had to do it today--I'm glad I left them), so we decided to assemble the swing instead.

It went together pretty quickly and smoothly, and we decided to bring it into the office to see whether it would fit. It does, and it's sitting by the window now, with a stuffed rabbit sitting inside it. There's a baby swing in our office. In a few months it will be rocking a baby. Unreal.

Did you realize...

This came up Friday night from one of our commenters: Did we realize that L.E.O. will actually be born under the zodiac sign Leo? To which the answer is:

1) Yes, but
2) We didn't notice it until a month after the blog started (and therefore several months after the project started), and
3) We take pretty much zero truck with astrology, at least partially because
4) The sun won't actually be between the IAU boundary of the constellation Leo and the earth when L.E.O. is actually born.

The sun will actually be pretty close to Asellus Australis, the central star in Cancer--assuming due dates stick appropriately. I suspect Jenny will have been induced long before the sun gets near the Cancer-Leo boundary (9h20m, or about 10 August).

Interestingly, it appears that Hindu astrologers use a zodiac that more closely resembles at least a vague match with the actual ecliptic. One wonders if the Forer effect would hold just as well for horoscopes produced by both sets of astrologers, or if people would actually be able to differentiate between the two. My bet is, as always, on Forer.

Adult 2.0 ponders the upgrade

I do not think I am ready to be a mother. Not when I can't talk to my own mother about a misunderstanding over something as simple as my plans for the visit to Seattle I'm starting in about eleven hours without crying. I'm going to blame the baby for my excessive emotionality--that's going to be one great thing about having a kid, someone to blame when Eric isn't around--but I'm vaguely worried now about how I'm going to handle being on the other end of these kinds of scenarios. On the other hand, I've found adulthood to be nothing more than a series of progressively more serious and complicated situations in which you have to make things up as you go along, and maybe parenthood won't be any different. We've been calling it Adult 3.0.

Adult 1.0 was the just-out-of-the-house stage, where things were pretty simple: you cooked and shopped for yourself, got three or four bills every month, maybe had a savings account as well as a checking account. Adult 2.0 was the stepped-up version of a shared household, homeownership, more complicated finances, long-term decisions about career aspirations and where to live. And now we face Adult 3.0: dependents for whom we have to make long-term decisions, even more complicated finances and legal issues, sacrifices and compromises and what I most sincerely hope will be some sort of compensation other than the satisfaction of being able to survive.

How does "Menendez" sound as a middle name?

"How was L.E.O. today?" Eric said when I got home this afternoon.

"Kicky," I replied, lying down.

He touched my abdomen in what's becoming a familiar motion and immediately got a curious expression on his face as L.E.O. kicked straight into his hand. "Indeed."

Then I got a curious expression on my face because there was suddenly a lot of pressure under his hand. "That's not you pressing down, is it?" I said.

"No...that's her pressing up."

Then I jumped as L.E.O. gave the biggest kick she's given yet, directly at Eric, who leaped away. We stared at each other. "I'm pretty sure she just tried to kill you," I said. I patted my belly. "Honey, at least finish gestating first."

Hiccups

I rolled onto my back this morning (not as desirable as it used to be; lower-back pain is starting to hint that it would like to be paid some attention) and checked to see if L.E.O. was awake. Thump...thump...thump. "I think she has the hiccups," I said.

Eric put his hand on my abdomen to see. "Whoa," he said, removing it when it got soundly kicked. We both watched as something rolled and pulsed under my skin. "What do you think this is?" I demanded. "A party?" But on reflection, I'm sure L.E.O. was probably just consolidating some plans to kidnap the world's premier doctors and scientists when she gets out to figure out a cure for hiccups.

Pants

"So apparently, maternity pants are kind of like... fitted sheets."

I found this hilarious when it came out of Jenny's mouth, and hey I'm sitting right here, so look a post!

Project L.E.O., the greed edition

As previously hinted, we are now registered for all the normal baby stuff, at Target and at Babies R Us, mostly at Bev's insistence because there's a shower coming up in a couple of weeks. There are a few non-normal baby things that we were unable to register for, however. These include, but are not limited to:

-home chemistry lab
-supercomputer with encrypter
-anything from here except the ABCs poster (because she has it)
-uranium
-Zeppelin of Death
-alternate transportation
-a tiara
-small hadron collider
-songwriters