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.

Shannon decided the nursery should be yellow. I was unconvinced, but I didn’t appear to have a say.

Mike and Michelle came over last weekend to do the painting (that’s Mike on the right there). Now that it’s finished, I’m starting to come around. It’s a nice gender-neutral color, and it is kind of pretty.

We’ve started to move things into the room. We bought the crib and the changing table this week (more on that later), and my parents will be in town this weekend to help us put it all together.