The nursery’s all done. Click the picture to see it from several angles. It looks pretty spectacular, I gotta say.

The stripe is finally done. Michelle still has some touch-up to do, but otherwise my work here is done.  Looks pretty good, too.

Good thing it’s done, though. I’m extremely sick of painting.

Stripe Part Two

Originally uploaded by cnitchie.

I took a pass at the second phase of the stripe two weeks ago. The less said about that attempt the better. Let’s just say that putting dark blue over white requires a lot of paint, and combining a lot of paint with a mediocre job of laying the masking tape leads to badness.

Mike and Michelle came over on Monday to help me repair the damage. There’s still more work to be done (which is why the other half of the room isn’t shown), but in the end I think it’ll look pretty good.

Our friends Ben and Nichole had their baby on Saturday, Desmond Beurkens Lorenz. Tonua’s got the details here. We can’t wait to meet him!

Shannon spent this past weekend in New York with her mother and (also pregnant) sister. It was a Mother’s Day gift for mom; they did lots (and lots) of baby shopping, and went to see Shannon’s High School friend Jill in Curtains on Broadway.

I stayed home and did chores, which wasn’t nearly as bad as it sounds. Spring sprang in spectacular fashion, so I got to spend the whole weekend with the windows open. There were hedges to be trimmed, a lawnmower to ready, carpets to vacuum, burgers to be grilled, and a stripe to paint.

Even though yellow is a gender-neutral color, the shade we picked for the nursery is an awfully pale yellow. So since we found out that the baby has boy parts, Shannon and Michelle (my brother’s fiancee, for those who might not know) have been designing a way to, well, butch up the joint. The result is a horizontal stripe that circles the room consisting of several shades. One of my jobs for the weekend was to get it started.

Turns out painting perfectly horizontal lines with exactly parallel edges that match up across windows, closets, and doorways is about as tricky as I’ve just made it sound. Here’s a step-by-step guide.

1. Position laser level on the wall at the desired height for the top of the stripe using the sticky adhesive strip enclosed with the handy-dandy, inexpensive laser level you bought last week.
2. Tape along laser line. So far so good.
3. Repeat on next wall, using another adhesive strip.
4. Realize that the economical but slightly flimsy laser doesn’t cross windows very well. Move laser to other side of window with another piece of adhesive and tape along laser line.
5. Notice that you didn’t quite match the level up. Re-set laser line with yet another piece of adhesive.
6. Realize that this cheap, lousy excuse for a laser level only came with four pieces of adhesive, and you can’t attach it to any more walls.
7. Undaunted, hold the level as steady as possible while marking positions along the line with a pencil.
8. I said steady, ya klutz. Do it again, if necessary saying a few words the baby shouldn’t hear.
9. Use an eraser to remove the erroneous pencil lines.
10. Realize that erasers to a really good job removing paint. Utter a few more naughty incantations. Resort to licking your fingers to remove the pencil lines.
11. Carefully place tap against the pencil lines. Repeat until tape extends around the room. Pray the tape lines up when you’re done.
12. Using a ruler, measure 12 inches down from the top line. Mark the position with a pencil.
13. Use the laser level to mark dots for the lower edge of the stripe.
14. Check the distance between the top line and a pencil mark further along the wall to verify that you’re maintaining the 1-foot distance.
15. Realize that “level” is a relative term. Recall from your high-school trigonometry classes that small angles add up over long distances. A few more colorful metaphors will likely be necessary.
16. Do what you should’ve done from the beginning, and measure your pencil marks from the top line all the way around the room.
17. At some point, wonder where that extra eighth of an inch came from. Shortly thereafter, wonder where the past two and a half hours have gone, and stop caring so much about the other thing.
18. Fill in the tape with paint.
19. Repeat.
20. Remove the tape. Given how long it took to put up, it’ll be slightly disappointing how easily it comes down.
21. Make a note to push tape tighter into corners in the future, as the small gaps you left resulted in paint drips.

Other than that, everything turned out pretty well, I’ve gotta say. Here’s the end result:

Note to self: never ever post an “everything’s fine” message for no particular reason. When I said we were waiting patiently for a baby to fall out, I didn’t mean to suggest he should get started right now.

I’m going to mess around with the order a bit here and jump to the end: it turned out to be nothing, a false alarm, and everybody’s doing fine.

This will be a little difficult to talk about without getting into some icky squishy girly stuff, but here goes. Normally, Shannon and I drive into work together, since she works just up the street from me. But she had a dentist appointment this morning, and drove separately. After the appointment, she noticed some extra fluid. It didn’t seem like a big deal, but being a good little preggo, she e-mailed her doctor just to let her know. She then went about her day, went to the gym after work, and got home at around 6:30.

At some point during the day, the O/B had left a message on our answering machine, saying that Shannon should go to the hospital and check herself into the women’s clinic so they could do some tests. The doctor was concerned that Shannon’s water might have broken, which, at 24 weeks, is a Very Bad Thing.

So. Cut to 15 minutes later, when I come home to an empty house and two messages on the machine: the one from the doctor, and another from Shannon saying, “I’ve gone to the hospital, the doctor thinks I might be leaking amniotic fluid, I’ll call when I get there.”

It’s a little hard to describe my reaction, but I believe the medical term is, “freak out.” The only thing that kept me from going completely off the rails was the very nonchalant tone of Shannon’s message. The words were scary, but the tone said, “The doctor, who is being silly, wants me to go to the hospital for some tests, but it’s no big deal.” So I waited, somewhat anxiously, by the phone for Shannon’s call. When it came, she still sounded incredibly nonchalant. “Should I come,” I ask. “Um, nah, I’m fine, I’ll let you know if it’s serious, but I don’t think it is.” So home I stayed. Fed the cats, fed myself, caught up on the news…

…and the phone rings again. This time it’s the O/B. Not what I wanted. But it turned out that she was just calling to make sure Shannon had gotten the message; at this point, the only semi-direct contact she’s had with us is Shannon’s e-mail. From this I infer that it is, in fact, relatively important that Shannon get herself into a hospital gown as soon as possible.

So I ask how serious this might be. “Well, it’s probably no big deal, so I wouldn’t worry about it.” I’m going to worry anyway, but that’s good to know. Still, if it is a fluid leak, which you seem to think it might be, what would that mean? “Well, if she’s leaking amniotic fluid, it could cause problems with the way the lungs develop and seriously impact development. Also, it raises a serious risk of infection. Are you going to the hospital?”

Note to doctors: think hard the next time you start off describing something as, “no big deal.” The word, “probably,” doesn’t help much if what follows is a litany of what might go wrong.

Upon arriving at the hospital, Shannon, who was laid out in a hospital gown with wires coming out of her abdomen to all sorts of machinery, informed me that, indeed, it was no big deal and she was perfectly fine. They’d ruled out a fluid leak and traced the likely cause to something much less serious (I’ll say it has to do with Monistat, and leave it at that). The EKG was great, his fluid levels are awesome, and everybody’s relaxed and groovy.

Shannon then, in all seriousness, noted the presence of a gray hair on my head. I’m not kidding.

And that was it, more or less. They did a “quick” ultrasound to verify that he had all the goop he needed for his lungs to do their thing, and sent us home. Note that this is “quick” in Hospital Time, so in fact it took about two hours, most of which was tracking down a machine, and most of the rest of which was the nurse trying to figure out how the machine worked, then giving up and using a different one.

And now we’re home. Shannon’s just finishing her shower and off to bed. I’m going to slug a stiff drink and do the same. To risk further wrath from the heavens: everything’s fine. Except I apparently have a gray hair.

P.S. In fairness to our O/B, who is a very sweet and attentive woman with whom we’re quite happy, I did press a little about what a fluid leak might mean. But when she asked if I was headed to the hospital, my calm pretty much went out the window.

P.P.S. Some humbling perspective here. I have no idea how Jason and Greta keep their composure, but Jason shows up for work every day (well, except yesterday and today, for obvious reasons), and the quality of his work, his energy, and his attitude haven’t suffered at all.  He’s an all-around amazing guy.

So the reason I haven’t posted in a while is that this is the part of the pregnancy where you wait patiently for a baby to fall out of your wife. Not much else is going on. Shannon had an appointment last week, and all seems well. We go back in a month for a routine glucose test, in which Shannon drinks a bottle of pure sugar and tries not to throw it up while they test her ability to process it. Pregnancy is fun!

If you’d like more detailed information about what’s going on with the baby, we check this site every week for updates. It’s a great resource.

Not much else to report, so here’s a picture of my girls taking a nap.

With all the excitement about the ultrasound yesterday, I haven’t gotten a chance to write about the weekend. My parents were in town for a brief visit, which was extremely nice. My dad helped me put together the crib, and helped retouch some of the paint job from last week where it was a little thin. The nursery is really starting to come together. Here’s a picture of the crib and the changing table. The blanket you see there was hand-knit by our friend Tracy in New York (there’s a hat, too). My mother also gave us a Michigan sweater that my grandmother knitted for me before I was born. Mike and Michelle painted the room. My mother’s workig on a number of other things. Our friends Ben and Nichole, who are having a baby sometime in May, have offered us their hand-me-downs.

We’re even receiving gifts for the baby from complete strangers. When we were looking around the cabin my parents will be renting later this summer for Mike and Michelle’s wedding, this really nice old lady, Madeline, came out of the house next door to say hi. When she found out Shannon was pregnant, her eyes got really wide, and she said, “wait right here!” She went back into the house and came back out with two bags, each containing a hand-knitted bib and hat, one pink, one blue. She’d apparently knitted them while caring for her ailing husband as a way to keep herself occupied, and now she has lots and lots of them to hand out. She gave us all hugs before we left.

So many things, so many people. Life is so grand.

Of course, those of us who watch The West Wing know that babies come with hats.

We had our major ultrasound this morning and got our first really good look at the kid. It seems to have inherited Shannon’s button nose. My primary contribution thus far appears to be somewhat… er… lower on the body.

Yup, it’s a boy. And we’re ecstatic.

Now, many of you know that we were kinda sorta hoping for a girl. We’ve had the girl’s name picked out almost since we were pregnant, but we’ve had almost daily conversations about boy’s names, and we never really had that a-ha moment, that moment when you know you’ve got it right. Also, neither of us really have any idea how to raise a boy. Shannon’s a very girly girl, and I’m not exactly a jock.

Well, that “we wanted a girl” thing went away like only so much smoke (as many of you said it would). As for not knowing how to raise a boy, it occurred to me this morning on the way to the doctor’s office that we barely know how to raise our cats, much less a person, boy or otherwise. So that’s a wash. Also, almost the moment Shannon knew it was a boy, she had that a-ha moment, and when she told me, I knew she was right.

(And no, we’re not telling you until we’ve told him, so don’t even try.)

Of course, it’s already acting like a typical bratty boy. He simply refused to cooperate with the ultrasound technician, squirming and moving around and refusing to hold still. We spent a good half of the session trying to get a clear view of his heart, but he’d have none of it. This one’s going to be a handful, folks.

Otherwise, everything’s more or less where it should be, and in the correct proportion. Theres a section on the report labeled, “Normal,” listing several dozen body parts. The next section is labeled, “Abnormal,” and it says simply, “None identified.” Best. Medical. Document. Ever.

Short version: buying our crib involved three days of trauma and much driving around south-east Michigan using two different vehicles, but now we have the crib, and all is as it should be.

Long version:

Monday night, we went by Babies ‘R’ Us to pick up a few small things and just look around. Now that the baby’s room is painted, we can start filling it up with stuff. Shannon was very keen to buy the crib, but I talked her out of it, seeing as how we still have around half the pregnancy to go, and plenty of time to do such things.

At dinner later that night, she was inconsolable. Hormones, I guess. So back we went.

Naturally, they were out. But the store in Novi, around 30 minutes away, had three. That’s fine, I said; ask them to hold it for a few days, and we’ll come get it this weekend. But we had a few hours until the Novi store closed, and did I mention the hormones?

A half hour later, we were at the Novi store, and sure enough, they had several in stock. They wheeled ours out to the curb, and I pulled up my car and… er… funny thing. It turns out that Honda Accords aren’t meant to hold cribs. We probably could have fit it in there, but the biggest piece wouldn’t fit through any of the doors, or the trunk. We tried everything, to no avail. So we wheeled it back into the store, and arranged to borrow our neighbor’s pickup truck to come pick it up later that week, and headed home, defeated. I was severely annoyed, but Shannon was very chipper. Hormones, I guess.

We’d planned to return on Thursday with the truck, but I’d forgotten that there was a party for our friend Tonua to celebrate her recovery from breast cancer (her humor and grace through the whole ordeal is one of the most incredibly amazing things I’ve ever seen), so we went Wednesday instead.

Wednesday, as a matter of course, had the worst weather we’ve seen in weeks. Frigidly, bone-achingly cold, with sporradic rain. Wonderful weather for driving your new crib home, in its half-opened box, in an open truck bed. Though we had a tarp, we had nothing to tie it down with, so it kept flaring up in the wind. It took us nearly an hour to drive the thing home from Novi to Ypsi, with frequent stops to rearrange things so that they didn’t fly off and kill anyone, which probably would’ve been bad.

But, finally, we got it home, carried it up into the new nursery, returned the truck, and went to bed. Mission accomplished. The saga of the crib completed at last.

Except for this postscript. The next morning, we were getting ready to go to work, and Shannon couldn’t find her purse. We looked all over the house, peeked into the pickup truck next door: no purse. As we drove to work, Shannon kept getting more and more upset (hormones, I guess). So I dropped her off, and turned around for home. Once there, I scoured the whole house; I went next door with the neighbors, opened the truck and looked around; no purse.

Not long after, Shannon realized that she might have left it in the garage, and sure enough, there it was. All were relieved, but the saga wasn’t quite over yet. See, this was the afternoon we were supposed to go to Tonua’s shindig. Shannon had told me that she’d meet me “outside” after work. I’d assumed that this meant “outside my office,” but when I showed up there at 5, and waited 15 minutes with no sign, I figured I must’ve misunderstood, and she’d meant to meet me outside my office, or outside the place where the party was supposed to happen. So I left, and checked those places: no Shannon. And since I had her cellphone (it was in her purse), there was no way to call her and ask her where she was. So I went back up to her office, and there she was, happy to see me, but very cold. She’d had something go long at the end of the day, which is why she hadn’t been out before.

And to top it all off: Tonua’s thing was cancelled, so we could’ve gone for the crib on Thursday night, after all.

I want my week back. And I’m really starting to get annoyed with hormones (and yes, I know, much more to come). But: the crib’s in the nursery, the truck we borrowed is returned in one piece, Shannon is once again in possession of her purse, our moods are both back at some semblance of equilibrium (though that won’t last), and things are back to normal. At least, as normal as life with pregnancy can be.

This kid had better love this crib. It converts into a bed, so we’ll have it for a looong time. I’m thinking through college.