New baby, new blog (new URL, too)

Okay, okay, I know…it's been a while since I've posted here. I guess BabyCar and I got caught up in the last minute baby prep stuff which, as you might expect, was followed by the "holy crap, we have a baby now" stuff.

Which leads me to this closing post, which I'm really eager to write so that I can shut this thing down and introduce you to my new (and much more exciting) blog. Pregnancy was a mess. It was miserable at its worst and hilarious at its best.

It was rarely anything in between.

Needless to say, we were plenty glad to put it behind us.

But you can't argue with results. After nine months of baby building and just under 30 hours of labor, we had the most beautiful little girl in the world (Babe-O, to you).

I'll spare you the details and just give you the two truths that I learned during the ordeal: (1) drugs are every bit as good as they're cracked up to be; and (2) in a labor/delivery room, I'm pretty much just a waste of oxygen.

Anyway, Babe-O was 7 lbs, 2 oz and was born with thick black hair and a better tan that I've ever had in my life. She was born on September 2, which at the time of this writing makes her just over three and a half months old.

This little girl is absolutely amazing and I hope you get to know her little by little through the new blog, which you can visit at www.daddydoesmyhair.blogspot.com.

This "What are you doing in my wife?" blog will stay here for posterity.

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.

Danger!

If you have a spray bottle in the house – for plants, puppy discipline, whatever – do NOT use it to squirt your pregnant wife's belly, no matter how perfectly round and adorable it may be.

Trust me. Just don't do it.

Nesting

Lately, BabyCar has been an organizing, reorganizing, cleaning machine. Which means that I have been an organizing, reorganizing, cleaning machine, too.

I'd read about this "nesting" thing in books, but you can't really appreciate the thing until it happens to you.

As just a young married couple, we could let a lot slide. A catch-all room for junk was no big deal (as long as the door stayed shut). The gunk underneath the fridge was fine, just stay out from underneath the fridge. Problem solved.

No more. I always wondered why everyone we knew seemed to be able to keep their houses so neat and tidy. Apparently, a few months into pregnancy number one, a little tidy bomb goes off in the womb and the mom-to-be becomes a mom on a mission.

In the last few weeks, I've pulled up carpet, cleaned out the basement, murdered a small army of dandylions in the front yard, scrubbed floors, replaced a stove (Thanks, MIL & FIL!), attacked the grimy bathroom, and thrown away (no exaggeration) about 25 bags of crap. The neighborhood trash pickers (sorry, "garbage enthusiasts") spent the better part of two evenings rooting through piles of old office paper and funny-smelling carpet padding. I hope they found something worthwhile in there at least.

Anyway, while I was going through my housekeeping adventures, BabyCar was reorganizing the kitchen, scrubbing every smooth surface in sight, and valiantly hacking her way through years of old papers, files, and junk mail.

Needless to say, things are coming together. Ava James has been a good influence on us.

Ava’s Box

It's weird the little things in your day that make it sink in that you've got a baby on the way. The positive pregnancy test was one thing, but that first moment doesn't even come close to letting you realize the gravity of what's going on.

BabyCar's slightly (adorably) protruding belly is a good reminder, but still doesn't quite do the whole thing justice. I still get caught off guard every once in a while when I walk past that little belly. It takes some getting used to, and it will certainly get a lot bigger before it gets any smaller.

But what really did it for me happened earlier today. I was cleaning the house, which I do about every eleven hours because I have three dogs and a currently muddy backyard.

It was the usual routine:

Dog toys go over here.

Laundry goes over there.

BabyCar's crap goes in a pile on her desk.

Dishes go in the dishwasher.

More of BabyCar's crap goes in a new pile by her desk.

Mop floors.

BabyCar's charity stuff goes in another pile by her desk (she's so giving). Wait, no room. New pile. On the shelf.

Dust.

You get the idea.

Only this time, I kept finding stuff that had no home – free sample baby bottles, tiny cute outfit from my Mom, head start pack of diapers.

The soon-to-be nursery is our used-to-be office, so it is still full of officey junk and an absolute TON of books (from back when we used to read stuff).

Anyway, the nursery isn't quite baby ready, so we have a little box in the hallway, about half-full of Ava's few belongings.

It makes me smile like a jackass every time I look at it.

I love it when a plan comes together

We've been thinking about this whole "have a baby" thing for a long time now. Even before we were actually considering making it happen, the topic would come up from time to time.

Back before BabyCar was a BabyCar, we were shopping for a regular car.

I remember wandering around the parking lot at Subaru, kicking tires and looking for a replacement for BabyCar's small Toyota SUV.

Even then, before Ava was any more than a thought in the back of our (her) mind, the baby wheels were turning in BabyCar's head.

You know, this next car is probably the one we'll be driving when we have a baby. We'd better step up a size.

What? At that point, there were only two of us. Our Toyota sat five. And had a cargo area. And a roof rack.

I didn't know a lot about babies, but I had seen one before. It was my understanding that they weighed between five and eight pounds and were about a foot tall if they stretched out really straight.

So why was I test driving a seven passenger vehicle to accommodate a family member to be named later that would be approximately the size of a poorly inflated football?

Babies have stuff, I was told.

Stuff? I have stuff. Doesn't mean I feel the need to lug it around with me everywhere. What the hell was the baby going to have that needed a third row seat and industrial grade cargo netting? I always pictured an eighteen inch tall Diana Ross snapping her fingers and having matching designer luggage dragged around for her wherever she went.

Put the sippy cups up front! The stroller goes in the back! Put Daddy on the roof!

Anyway, about six or eight seven-passenger car payments later, we were ready to start filling the third row seat of our five star safety rated four wheel drive with two tons of stuff for our *one* baby.

(And I know that Subarus are all- and not 4-wheel drive, but I like having all the numbers in that sentence, so don't even start with me.)

With all of that said, I am now ready to admit that it is going to be really nice to have the big stupid car. We're having an Ava James, not a Diana Ross, but the more we start planning for the big day, the more I realize that babies do come with their share of gear.

And besides – the further this pregnancy comes along, the more often I'm getting kicked out of the bed in the dark hours of the morning. It will be nice to have that third row seating when I start spending 3 – 7 a.m. sleeping in the parking lot at work.

Ava James

That’s her name. We’re pretty sure.

We’ve had lots of names in mind, for girls and for boys, but they all pretty much went out the window in the last week or so. Our sweet girl is already developing her own little personality.

Her mom gets to enjoy it more than I do, but I guess that’s just part of the deal.

All of the pretty names we had come up with – MacKenzie, Cameron, Samantha – plus tons of others, were all great, but they just aren’t her.

She’s an Ava. James is a family name, but Ava is just who she is.

I can’t wait to meet Ava James. She’s already way cooler than I am.