T-minus 4 Weeks… or so

Actually, it’s more like 3.5 weeks, but really who’s counting? (3 and 4/7 if you want to split hairs and/or remainders.)

This wekend we removed a big weight of our shoulders: we finished the nursery. All the furniture was delivered last week, but then I promptly left for a business trip. I returned Friday night, and my wife made it known, in no uncertain terms, that the nursery had to be done this weekend.

And I’m happy to report we did just that. Crib. Check. Changing table. Done. Glider and ottoman. Fini. Bassinet. Another word for done.

We even attached the car seat adapter to the-world’s-greatest-stroller (see an earlier post if that reference doesn’t land with you). I even spent about an hour breaking down and cutting cardboard boxes into increasingly tiny squares so they could be stuffed into our alley recycle bin.

Quick tangent: a major pet peeve of mine is inefficiency. Like when people parallel park but don’t pull up to the end of the curb, thereby taking up two spots. Or people who hold up the boarding process on the airplane. (PLEASE step out of the aisle and let others pass.) Inefficient = inconsiderate = rude. So it drives me bonkers when neighbors (it’s a shared recycle bin) put entire boxes in the bin. All you have to do is flatten the box so more can fit. I mean, I love being indignant, granted, but I can’t fathom who does this. I want to set up a camera to catch people so I can shame them into flattening their boxes.

Where was I? Oh yes. With all that furniture, we had enough cardboard to … Well, do something that requires vast amounts of corrigated board. (It’s early yet and my analogy engine isn’t warmed up.)

I found myself just standing in the room admiring its completeness. My wife asked, “what are you doing in there?” “Nothing. Just staring.”

My wife walked in and – as cheezy as this sounds – we just stood in the clean nursery and hugged. Then, because the moment was at risk of being too sentimental… I turned to my wife and said, “you know, it’s not too late to change our mind.” “About the furniture layout?” “No, the pregnancy.”. She then punched me and walked away.

Swine Flu

[Blog time-out! We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog to bring you Papi Nuevo's list of Swine Related Maladies]

I think this Swine Flu “pandemic” is getting blown out of proportion. I mean, in the spectrum of swine-related maladies, the flu really isn’t even near the top:

1. Swine Cancer
2. Swine AIDS
3. Swine Diabetes
4. Swine Herpes
5. Swine Arthritis
6. Swine Flu
7. Swine Sniffles
8. Swine Headache
9. Swine Tennis Elbow
10. Swine In-grown toe nail
11. Swine ate-too-much
12. Swine something-in-your-eye

What does 34 weeks look like anyway?

My wife is pretty tall – 5′11 (she claims 5′10 but I’m doing what guys do and rounding up). So relative to her height, the baby pooch appears smaller. But I assume if she was shorter, with a pooch of the same size, it would appear larger. Essentially, she’s an optical illusion, I guess is my point.

Yesterday, we were at a bakery and the girl behind the counter asked how far along she was. “34 weeks,” my wife acknowledged. The girl behind the counter was amazed, “Wow, you look great.” That’s not the first time my wife has heard that.

So we’ll see in the remaining 6 weeks (we hope) if she ever gets to the point where you look at her and go, “Wow, that lady is about to pop.”

Quick tangent: she does not want her belly button to pop out. Each week I take notice and say, “I don’t know – its a little less shallow than it was last week.” But she refutes this and claims that there is no way her belly button will pop out. 6 weeks to go, we’ll see who wins that bet.

Gotta start planning now

I turned to my wife this evening and asked her, “So, what race do we want to teach our baby to hate?” She wasn’t amused. But you gotta start planning these things ahead of time.

But then I realized the answer: people whose second toe is longer than their big toe. I realize that’s not a race. But that’s what I’m going to teach my baby to hate.

Papi mobile!

Omg. I just figured out how to post from my blackberry. This opens up a whole new world of quick, random thoughts.

To start things off: we’re at week 34. While my wife isn’t in full waddle mode yet, she’s defintely developed herself a sashay.