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.