Registered

Yesterday we registered at Target. This involved running around with a scanner gun and deciding which bouncy seat thingie we want someone to perhaps buy for us. I manned the gun, of course, for it kept me occupied. Julie's role was to prevent me from scanning everything in sight.

It's all so arbitrary, isn't it? Nuks, for example, which I think is how you spell it. How do you know which one to get? So you scan in four or five of them, as if someone is actually going to print off your scan sheet and plod around the store before deciding, "Oh, well I suppose I'll buy them a few nuks. That way, the baby can suck."

I feel it's also a bit presumptuous to register for your baby. We're almost 30, after all. It's not like we're recently out of college and wondering where the next rent payment is going to come from. But Julie insists that there are myriad people who really want to buy us something, so it makes sense to try to ease their shopping experience. And hopefully it'll prevent us from getting crap we don't want.

It was all worth it, though, in the bottle aisle when Julie suddenly exclaimed, "Oh! Nipples!"

Fair

This evening we went to the MN State Fair. We weren't originally planning to go except as it turns out, we were hungry.


Julie started by eating a baby goat. Just kidding. But that is caffeinated Coke in her hand. Tisk tisk.


The dorkiness of this picture is almost too much to bear. You might think she was deliberately being silly for the camera, but no. That is literally how happy she was about that corndog.


And yes, we did pet some goats. We stayed away from the birthing area, though. No need to experience the miracle of life quite yet.

Milk

Julie emailed me today with the following subject line: "I think we need to buy chocolate milk."

The message said, "I might be addicted."

I can picture her with a gallon jug at her desk, head tipped back and chugging like a college student, the overflow dribbling off her chin like a waterfall onto her belly.

Her eyes dart back and forth as she chugs, making sure no one stumbles upon her like this, but not out of embarrassment as much as concern that they might want her to share.

I love that chocolate milk is like a new discovery, like "Did you know it also comes in chocolate?" When our daughter discovers chocolate milk, we'll act like it's a special treat in hopes that she will develop a lifelong addiction to it instead of Diet Coke.

Meanwhile, I will use this new chocolate milk infatuation as a bargaining chip. "Julie, if you empty this dishwasher, I will hand-deliver a frothy, ice-cold glass of chocolate milk." This weekend is going to be awesome.

Stay

Julie is 29 weeks pregnant. I still struggle processing time in terms of weeks and instead opt to divide everything by 4. So she's 7.25 months pregnant, but that's of course assuming that every month has 28 days in it. Really, she's probably more like 6.8923.

Twice this past week I've given women the pregnancy update and heard them say, "That's when I went into labor." Twice. And now I'm kinda freaked.

Let me tell you about all the reasons having a baby at this instant would be a bad thing.

1. I don't know where the hospital is. We go to the doctor one place and deliver someplace else. I should probably mapquest that at some point.

2. The suitcase isn't packed, and I wouldn't even know what to put in it anyway. Diapers? Spit-up blankets? Yeah, we don't have any of that stuff.

3. The crib has not arrived. The baby would have to sleep in a drawer.

4. We don't have a car seat, so I guess the baby wouldn't sleep in a drawer. I've heard the nurses tase you in the parking lot if you don't have a car seat. Of course, we'd have to know where the hospital is in order to be tased by nurses, so yeah.

5. Tiger Woods 2009 just came out for the PS3, and I'd like to buy it and play it a little before becoming a dad. Don't judge me.

I could go on. Let's hope our daughter likes her home now and doesn't suddenly decide to go exploring.

Quiz

I got home at 5:00 this evening. I tidied the house, fed and played with the dogs, and fixed a section of the rain gutter that gravity singled out this morning as the object of its wrath. Suddenly 7:00 hit and Julie pulled into the driveway. Not good: no dinner.

When she's late from work, preggers beyond recognition, and I've been home for two hours, I better have dinner ready. That's just, like, duh. So I leaped into the car and sped off to Noodles & Company, ordered her pasta fresca to go, ran to Chipotle while they made it, got some real food there, then back to N&C for the pasta, then to the car, then hit every red light possible on the way home.

At home I found Julie a bit deflated, except still extremely, extremely inflated. She was on the couch in pink pajama pants and a pink t-shirt with a pregnant stick figure on it and the words "knocked up" written above it (yes, in lowercase).

Five minutes later, the noodles were gone and she wanted chocolate. Anything chocolate. A brown button off a shirt, whatever. And we had none in the house. She was also ready to tell me about her day, so I put her in the car, pink pajamas and all, and drove her to SuperAmerica.

On the way, we chatted.

At SA, I made her lock the doors in case some riffraff should spot her while I raided the place for chocolate.

I bought the following: two king-size Twix bars, a massive bag of Peanut M&Ms, a package of fudge stripe cookies, and a box of chocolate, chocolate/vanilla, and vanilla pudding pops.

We drove home. Upon our arrival, she ate and was content. The $64,000 question is, what did she eat? Think about it, and then click the comment link for the answer.

Perspective

Tonight is freshmen orientation at school, so I'll meet a bunch of kids who will be my age when my daughter goes to her first freshmen orientation. I'm trying to wrap my head around this and so far I'm failing.

There are a couple new empty-nesters in my department, and they like to remind me how fast it goes. I suppose they are in the only position to understand this because all I can think about is how unbelievably long nine months can feel.

Tonight I'll certainly think about being one of the parents ushering around their kid. I hope 15 years from now when I'm in their position, I'll remember not to be too judgmental about the English teacher.

Poetry

One of the ironies of pregnancy is that you can't say to your wife what you will later say over and over to your toddler: "You're getting so big!" I suppose that example of irony implies that there are similarities between a pregnant woman and a toddler, but I would never say that. I like life too much.

At the same time, Julie is getting bigger. Like, whoa bigger. I join her sometimes in her super-closet when she requests feedback on an outfit. All joking aside, and speaking not as a husband but through the lens of an objective, shallow, superficial evaluator of physical beauty, she always looks spectacular. I am eternally thankful for this because it means I do not have to lie.

It also means I can in good conscience lampoon her occasional insecurity, like when she looked in the mirror, stunningly beautiful, and said "I am a big, unwieldy creature." My God. Talk about irony! When daily mutterings step aside to make way for poetry like that, you must celebrate the cause.

Then, as she rested her hands on the ledge of her belly, I asked "What are you going to rest your hands on once you have the baby?"

"My hips, which I used to have."

Poetry. Toddlers and pregnant ladies: they say the damnedest things.

School

Summer is over. Tomorrow is my first teacher workshop before kids show up in my room the day after Labor Day. The question everyone asks is, what exactly do you do at these workshops? Don't worry: that's not what this post is about. Suffice it to say that I am entering my 8th year, so I've experienced this coming week 7 times already.

What I have not experienced is having to leave my classroom at a moment's notice. You know, to like witness the birth of my child or something. Many other jobs, you would just high-five your boss on your way out the door. Teaching, though, I can't exactly just up and leave my classroom. My kids would start learning without me, and a mind is a dangerous thing when unsupervised by the man.

So my plan is to find emergency coverage for each class I teach. In other words, someone in my department must have their prep period 2nd hour. Well now they'll be my 2nd hour go-to person should the baby be so discourteous as to arrive then. And so on throughout the day. I'll bolt, and they can take over the riveting semi-colon interpretive dance or whatever's going on that day. We'll need a signal, though, like the bat signal only with a silhouette of a woman's water breaking.

Then I'll have 3-5 days of sub plans at all times for the subsequent days. If my kids have an essay due and the baby arrives, automatic extension. Test that day? Postponed. I can see it now: "Mr. K., I like didn't study because I was sure that Mrs. K. would have the baby and you wouldn't be here today."

"I guess it kind of sucks to be you, huh?"

Told

We went to USA Baby today to pick out new upholstery for our glide rocker. Seems what we first ordered was discontinued. This puzzles me because we generally have our fingers on the pulse of American popular culture. Not so with glide rocker upholstery, apparently.

Couples in baby stores are always so serious. There's like an unspoken rule that you need to be solemn and mature, as if acknowledging that everyone in the store is as over their heads as you.

We also looked at the bumper that goes around the inside of the crib. Picture a room with padded walls and now picture it in a crib. Julie read somewhere, or perhaps it was a Fox News feature, that a puffy bumper increases the likelihood that your baby will roll over in her sleep and get her face lost in the puff, resulting in (bum bum bum...) certain death.

Ever the voice of reason, I shared with Julie analysis of our nation's culture of fear and suggested that USA Baby probably would not sell products that led to certain death. A somber husband and wife looked up from their hushed conversation about mobiles. The husband shook his head at me as if to say, you poor, stupid bastard.

Julie wheeled around and stuck her finger in my chest, her eyes bugged out almost as far as her belly. "I don't care about your little culture of fear B.S. If one bumper is even slightly safer than another one, then that's what I'm getting for my daughter."

The husband by the mobile suppressed a smirk, and his wife hit his shoulder to redirect his attention. Julie's finger remained glued to my sternum as I said, "How about you pick one out, and I'll agree with you?"

"That's better."

***Update***

The bumper is only decorative? Well, screw that! And here I thought it served some grand purpose, like preventing bedbugs from creeping in through the bars. You've got to be constantly vigilant, people. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go buy all those Baby Einstein DVDs, essential for admission into a top-tier nursery school. I mean come on: it's Einstein.

Violence

Our daughter is becoming quite the little kick-boxer. I don't think Julie's quite used to it yet because we'll be eating or driving someplace to eat or sitting after eating, and suddenly she'll be like "Bwah!"

A lady at the next table whispers to her companion, "That's the prettiest paranoid schizophrenic I've ever seen."

Julie says it starts with a light tap or two, like a cautious fish not quite biting your hook. Then POW, she clobbers her. It'll only get worse, too, as the baby is around two pounds and getting bulkier.

Meanwhile, I'd like to train the baby to kick Julie only under certain circumstances. Sass off to me: POW! Advise me on my driving: POW POW! Complain about the taste of water: POW POW POW POW POW!

This is going to be good. Of course, I can picture Julie yanking my head by the ears down to her stomach just in time for the little imp to punch me in the nose.

Dirt

How often should you bathe a baby? This is a question that I suspect we'll research when we have a semi-dirty baby and no energy.

Our dogs go a couple weeks between baths, but babies? I'm thinking every day or every other day. They pretty much always reek, right? They have stink coming out both ends. Luckily they mature and reach the point where they greatly value neatness and cleanliness. Right? Our kid will, at least. She will inherit her daddy's hygiene, avoiding the sticky and shunning the gross.

I'm afraid the dogs will be a bad example, though. At the dog park yesterday, Tulip rolled her body atop a dead bird. It was more like half a dead bird. So imagine finding half a dead bird and thinking, this smells so succulent that I will now rub my body all over it. This thought process does not jive with mine at all.

If our baby pays more attention to the dogs than to us, we could have another dead bird roller on our hands. That just will not do. Tulip got a vigorous, thorough bath last night, to her chagrin. She doesn't comprehend cause and effect, so the next time she sees half a dead bird, she will think only of the marvelous perfume, undeterred by the unpleasant bath sure to follow. God help us if our daughter is the same way.

I read once that babies initially think of their feces as a gift, like look what I've made for you, Daddy! Babies are nasty. We'll set our daughter straight early, get her to be creative with crayons and paper instead, and enjoy a squeaky-clean parenthood.

Furry

The dude came out and put freon in our tank. It was low, but since we've been here for three years, it was probably a very slow leak. He also turned our furnace AC setting to high because, inexplicably, the previous owners had it set lower.

But the real problem, I suspect, will be solved next Tuesday. Even after everything, the vents still seemed a bit slow, reluctant to fully bathe me in their freony coolness. I asked about it, and he asked me when I had last had the ducts cleaned.

"The ducks?" I flapped my elbows, which pretty much answered his question.

Our dogs, he explained, maliciously shed their fur over our vents, so now our ducts are probably more clogged than Ronald McDonald's aorta.

All paraphrasing aside, next Tuesday another dude is coming to clean our ducts. This will result in better air flow and better air quality, just in time for...the baby! Score another one for Dad, taking care of business one crisis at a time. Current temperature: 77 and falling, down from 81.

Sweat...sweet

This is actually going to turn out okay. So as you read (or didn't) in the last post, our central air is wonky. This morning one of the copper pipe thingies had frost around it, so I turned it off and called a guy to come check it out.

For all you do-it-yourselfers, shut up. I know the condenser's probably just a little dusty, or the coils need scrubbing and then a hug. Or the freon is low. Or it's all residual punishment for not changing the filter until yesterday. Blah blah blah. Point is, if the quickest way to fix it is for a guy in overalls to charge me $200 to sing lullabies to it, then fine. I'll harmonize.

Besides the fact that it's August and just short of boiling outside, the timing is perfect. As a teacher at the tail-end of summer, I happen to be available for the entire 8-hour window tomorrow. I felt pretty awesome on the phone when the woman half-apologetically, half-gloatingly said "We do require you to be available from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM." Like check mate, buddy, hope you don't melt. But of course, I was like "Sure! I have nothing else to do!" And deep down I was thinking, a visitor!

Julie, meanwhile, is involved with the national sales meeting at work. Very big deal. Today she won't get home until 9:00 PM, which ordinarily is cause for much crabbiness but today allows her to avoid the heat that I am currently suffering.

By tomorrow (sometime between 8:00 and 4:00), I hope to report a relatively inexpensive fix. "Ladies and gentlemen, he plugged it in!" Something like that. Otherwise, I might have to type an irate post from a laptop at the air-conditioned Apple store at the mall.

Broken

Something about our central air is totally effed. It's like our system is blowing air out our vents through a straw. I've been all over the internet studying up on furnaces and whatnot in hopes that I don't have to put my pregnant wife through any more 79-degree days inside the house.

Unless I have a break-through tomorrow while she's at work, I'll be calling in a dude and paying him whatever it takes. Meanwhile, feel free to call or comment with your well-meaning but probably unintelligible (to me) suggestions. "Crank the Johnson lever to 12 or until the torque equals the compression." Thank you very much in advance.

I did change the filter today, which made me feel like a dad. All I need is a daughter so that I can demand that she help even though I don't really need it. "Danielle, come down here and hold the screwdriver for Daddy. Bring Daddy's special pop." That'll make all these infuriating repairs fun.

Duluth

Surprise! Julie just gave birth to a four-and-a-half-month-old boy, three months early. There were complications when the hat came out bill-first, but otherwise all went well.

Actually, this is my cousin's kid. He liked Julie a lot, but he only put up with me out of politeness. I need to get a doll and practice holding it. I feel like I hold babies as if they're some combination of a puppy and a sandwich.

We were all in Duluth for my grandpa's 80th birthday. There he is on some of my cousins' shoulders; they were scream-singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow." Note the cute pregnant lady in the background.


The party was on a boat on Lake Superior. I neglected to share this detail with Julie until three days ago, thinking she might renege out of concern for motion sickness. I know, I'm a sensitive guy. I also forgot to remind her to bring a barrette or rubber band for the wind.


She actually did fine on the boat, despite confiding to me early, "I'm going to kill you." It was fun to see everyone, and we're certainly excited to give the birthday boy another great-grandchild.

Show

We don't have cable, so whenever we stay in a hotel, we binge. In the morning, there is a show on TLC called Jon and Kate Plus 8. This couple had twin girls, then sextuplets, then decided to let their lives be filmed.

If my first kid wasn't percolating in my wife's womb, I would not be interested in this show. As it is, though, I find it fascinating. I'm also pretty sure that we could become BFF with this couple if they would just respond to the 1,456 emails I have sent.

Just kidding. But seriously, Jon and Kate, if you ever want to hang out, just call.

Random pics

Here's the pregnant lady sleeping, her stomach in a hole. Kind of cold that day, but the baby kept quite warm.


Here's the sunset and Chicago from the deck of the cabin.


Here's Julie at Red Robin in Eau Claire on the way home. I tied a balloon to her purse, and she tried desperately to untie it before the waitress called us to our table.

Vacation

Just a quick post to update you on some important vacation happenings.

Julie passed her gestational diabetes test with flying colors. On Friday night, she discovered two messages on the cell phone that she never answers. Both were from the lab, requesting a return call. They don't tell you anything specific over the phone, so our first thought the night before vacation, after the lab had closed, was that she had failed the test, necessitating an infinitely less pleasant follow-up test and possible subsequent dietary militancy.

So she freaked out a little bit. We downloaded all sorts of gestational diabetes menus and planned to spend our vacation operating under the assumption that she did indeed have it, just to be safe.

The next morning she called the lab and found out that the call was not about the test, but that in fact the savvy motivated lab technicians had forgotten to test for something else, had wasted all her blood on other tests or whatever, and could she please come back in to get pricked again, sorry and have a nice day.

Back we went, delaying our vacation departure. One hole in the arm later and McDonald's drive-thru to celebrate probably not having gestational diabetes, we were off.

Just a quick public service announcement to the Wisconsin drivers who camped out in the left lane on Interstate-94 and the innocent bystanders in the right lane: When Julie slalomed you all at 85 miles-per-hour, she said to me, "I'm a good Mario Kart driver." In the future, if you see a black Toyota Rav4, it's best to just pull over and let it pass. In the meantime, I'm looking for a bumper sticker that says "Crazy and Preggers."

I'll post pictures later. My favorite is of Julie sleeping on the beach, her stomach in a hole.

Dangerously cute

This post falls under the nauseating category, but in the interest of full disclosure, here it is. Julie and the baby, through some cosmic snafu, have new nicknames. I share them now, again, only in the interest of full disclosure because truly this is information that you could live without and still be quite content until you turn 112 and pass quietly into the good night.

In fact, upon reading further, you might burp a little from the cuteness and ultimately cost yourself that uneventful 112th year. You see, that burp will leave another burp in its wake, which will lie dormant in your esophagus for years and years until your 111th birthday, at which point you will unleash it, causing your house to rumble and the chandelier to fall on your head, killing you in a spectacular yet painless explosion of light and glass. All your centennarian friends will applaud wildly, thinking it's the Fourth of July.

All from the nauseating cuteness of Julie and the baby's new nicknames. Well, you've been warned.

Julie = Booper
Baby = Beeper

When you next see Julie, say "Hey Booper, how's Beeper?"

Shot

This is Julie at lunch reflecting on getting a surprise shot in the butt. The shot was to prevent our conflicting blood types from making our baby a vampire. Julie's blood type is A- and mine is A+, so the shot also guarantees a 4.0 through medical school.

Julie does not enjoy shots, especially surprise butt ones. Here is an artist's rendering to help you experience some of her pain.


In other news, Julie's placenta has crept back up to normal, meaning a hooha birth is back on the table. So that's good, plus it was cool to see the baby again, as she's looking much more human and less like a chicken nugget.

And she hasn't sprouted a weiner since last time, so she's undoubtedly a girl. All in all an excellent day, but better for me.

Doctor

Tomorrow we get a bonus ultrasound to make sure Julie's previously low-lying placenta has risen. If not, then she'll need a C-section because it's bad if the placenta splashes out first.

Enjoying that breakfast?

She also has the routine test for gestational diabetes. I believe she gets to drink some high fructose corn syrup or something and then they hit her knee with a rubber hammer and make sure it bounces back.

We also have a question about Julie's recently numb hands, which she googled and discovered that there is actually such a thing called pregnancy-induced carpal tunnel. It's no big deal, but I basically want to ask the doctor "Seriously?!" Okay, don't get all concerned. She can still feel them. And I have a needle and thread should they happen to fall off.

Updates on these items will be forthcoming, as I realize you will be waiting with teeth clenched--which could result in pregnancy-induced TMJ.

Leave

Let's pretend that Julie gives birth right when she's due. After, she's planning on taking between 12 and 16 weeks off from work.

Let's say she takes 16. When that's up, it gives us just about precisely 12 weeks until my school year ends.

The Family Medical Leave Act states that an employee is entitled to take 12 weeks off, unpaid, in order to stay home with an infant.

See where I'm going with this?

We would then send our daughter to daycare at 10 months of age instead of 4.

Very interesting.

Credibility

When I was little, my dad taught me the concept of infinity using ice cream. Interrupting as I was about to dig into a scoop, he told me how I could make it last forever.

"How? How how how how how how?"

"Well, you start by eating half of it. Then you eat half of it again," he said.

"That's two bites," I said, revealing slightly below average intelligence.

"No, you eat half of it, then half of what's left, then half of what's left. You'll never finish it."

That first bite gave me a headache that lasted 10 minutes. Then, as the subsequent bites got smaller and smaller, I understood I had been fiendishly duped. It reminded me of the time Dad told me about belt snakes, causing me to fearfully shun all belts.

I can't wait to exact misdirected vengeance on my own child.

Memory

Julie has an uncanny memory, mine sucks, and she is convinced that her memory genes are dominant and my sucky memory genes are recessive. I am doubtful about this, so we made a bet that will be settled three years from now. Don't worry: Julie will remember this bet even if I won't.

The bet involves the game Memory--you know, the one where you flip over cartoon animal cards and match them with like cards. The game is not fun and requires no marketable skills whatsoever, so I don't feel at all bad that Julie has beaten me roughly 100 times in a row (she could tell you the exact number). Julie claims that once our daughter turns three, she will be able to defeat me at Memory. And I think our daughter will prefer to eat the cards rather than match them.

I don't remember the stakes of our bet, but I hope it's something good. I'm totally gonna school that kid.

Editorial note: This is my 100th post. Pregnancy is proving to be a sturdy muse.

Itch

See her there? That's her "take the picture, ass face" face.

Julie occasionally suffers from a pregnancy malady we have termed "Itchy Belly." To see her, you would think she was trying to claw the baby out. If only her mouth would foam a little, I might film it and show it to my students this fall as an argument for abstinence.

Instead her jaw slackens because to scratch that itch feels soooo good. I stand by with a drool towel.

Disclaimer (so she doesn't beat me to oblivion): I exaggerated a bit there. But it's true that sometimes her stomach itches.

And why wouldn't it? That time at the fair when I entered the blueberry pie eating contest, my stomach approached Augustus-Gloopian proportions--and it itched. I think.

But really, if suddenly your body began to rapidly outgrow your skin, the stretching of that skin might just cause you to itch. Or maybe her arms aren't long enough to reach every part of it with soap.

Neurotic

I've started to feel this pit-of-the-stomach dread. I don't suppose it's all that uncommon among parents-to-be. I think mine is compounded by the fact that my days this summer have provided little in the way of brain stimulation. Teaching is the perfect profession to get you to stop thinking about yourself. Summer, though? What else is there to think about?

I seem to be fixated on the myriad ways things could go awry. I don't even mean the baby's health, because for some reason that is so utterly out of my control that it doesn't occupy my thoughts. Child care, though. Money. Whether I'll even be good at parenting. Whether I'll lose track of all my friends. Those are the thoughts that turn irrational for me when I should be sleeping.

Action helps. Today I have been researching childcare. If Julie delivers mid-November and goes back to work mid-Februaryish, then that gives us roughly four months until my summer "vacation" starts again. One question I'm looking into is, could I just, like, not work then? I'll be starting my 8th year in this district, I'm tenured, and I like it. I am not willing to simply resign my position. But an unpaid leave...now that would be sweet.

But impossible, I'm afraid. So onward. Montessori programs look good to me right now. But who knows?

I'm saying "But" a lot, and therein lies the problem. I suppose at some point you just close your eyes, roll the dice, and hope to God you don't accidentally destroy everything around you.