What is this thing in my living room?

This past weekend was baby shower weekend. More about that later, but just a quickie for now.

One of the fruits of our outstanding baby shower out in Kentucky was a top of the line Pack'n'Play – kind of a crib/bassinet/changing table/playpen that you can fold up into a bag the size of your leg, provided that you've completed a year or two of formal training in engineering.

After my parents (the pack'n'play givers) spent a good portion of their Friday night assembling this thing, we broke it all down, took it home, and set it up in our living room. BabyCar put together the baby swing while I assembled the pack'n'play.

If it was a race, she won.

After many frustrating rounds of battle with the less-than-stellar instructions, we had our pack'n'play, albeit we were up a bit past our bedtime.

A few hours later, I woke up (as usual) to one of three dogs scratching to go outside in the middle of the night, which (as usual) I sleepily obliged. While the dogs went out to do their thing, I puttered around the living room until the pack'n'play caught my eye. In my late night stupor, I had forgotten all about the thing and it was very disorienting to come face to face with it. My 2 a.m. amnesia kept me from remembering where it had come from and I wasn't entirely sure whether or not we had at some point come home from the hospital with Ava and that she was now lying inside of this strange thing.

A few seconds later – less disoriented – I had my bearings and remembered what was going on.

But even then, there was the pack'n'play – a big plastic shrine to the baby gods – resting there in the moonlight.

Like the first time I really noticed BabyCar's protruding belly or felt Ava kick, it was one of those baby reality checks.

She's coming. And she'll go in the pack'n'play.