Where's that Harriet of ours?

Jeez, how long does it take to get a friggin' baby out of there?  It's all slippery and juicy, you'd think she'd slide right out.  I'm starting to get concerned that she's going to be as stubborn as Mommy.

Speaking of Mommy, she's asleep right now.  She's in early labor with reasonably consistent contractions that stop her from talking, but not from doing (she helped make the spicy green bean dish tonight).  I'm running all over the place trying to get everything on the list(s) done.  Plus, I've still got some work things to take care of which I found difficult to do while hovering over Mommy (mostly unwanted it turns out) for the past week or so.

Oh, right, it turns out that the labor tub vendor is not delivering because they are north of Seattle and the weather is still a bit crap up there.  Maybe we won't need it until tomorrow and they'll be able to deliver.  Mommy's not too worried about the tub getting here, so I'll be cool about it too (oh yeah, I'm going to crap talk that service to others...maybe).

Next time I'm going to write about what big suckers we are for baby wank despite our pre-pregnancy rants against just such crap.  Oh, yeah, I'm now that boring parent to be that can't stop talking about awesome baby things that I just can't wait to happen.  If old me met new me I'd kick my ass.

Daddy

So it begins!?

At 9am it appears that Mommy's water broke, so Harriet is definitely
on her way. It's still early labor with contractions pretty far
apart, so nothing is going to happen any time soon.

Let me just say that if this post inspires you to call...don't. Mommy
is excited that something is starting to happen, but still seems to
have a strong distaste for everyone and would as likely claw your eyes
out as eat a bagel with cream cheese (which Daddy was just told he
makes wrong...because I don't put the cream cheese on right...implying
that Daddy is, probably, functionally rhubarb [remember that it's not
nice to say retarded]).

More news as things progress. Daddy is going to take a nap for an
hour because my honey-do list just tripled.

Sent from my bustknuckulous iPhone

No one is humping this Mommy

We are now 3 days passed due. Unless Harriet arrives in the next hour and ten minutes, she will not be born on Christmas day. Hallelujah. Daddy asked me what I would do if we won the lotto last night. Despite my best efforts to stay positive about the whole natural birth process, I laughed maniacally that I would opt for an elective Cesarean to get this puppy out. I really couldn't stop laughing. Which of course made me want to pee. Laughing uncontrollably is never a good thing this late in a pregnancy. It leads to other uncontrollable things.

I kicked Daddy out for the full afternoon. It was glorious. No one called or asked me if she was here yet. No one asked if they could do anything for me. No one told me to stay in bed. Truth be told, Daddy gives the best foot rubs, so I'm always glad when he is around, but also appreciated some quiet time. I'm starting to feel like a cat that has found a dark closet and is just waiting for her litter to be born. I really don't want to talk to anyone or leave until she comes out.

Unfortunately, I have to see my midwife and acupuncturist every day at this point. The Seattle roads have been crap with the snow. Lets just say each trip is a bumpy, brutal, contraction-filled ride. Daddy wants to talk and ask questions and its all I can do to hold my ginormous belly and breathe deeply while snapping at him to shhhhhh. Much like a pregnant feline, I've resorted to scratching and and hissing.

That's all for now. As you can tell, Daddy has much more to say due to a normal case of verbal diarrhea. More from him later.

Mommy 

Merry Christmas...now get the hell out of there!

It's Christmas morning and Mommy is still asleep.  Not sure if she stayed up late watching Mad Men (which is just layers of pastiche and uninspired clever banter), but I just poked my head into her cave and it was dark and she was snoring.  It was very hard not to rush in and start rubbing and kissing Mommy and her belly (soon to be Harriet) as Daddy woke up after 9 hours of sleep, so his Ya-Ya excitability quotient has gone up a bit.  

Oh, it sounds like the pee-pee fairy just visited Mommy.  Mommy is getting very well acquainted with the pee-pee fairy, and I think that as you drop further, Harriet, that they're only going to get closer.

Time for breakfast, cleaning up, and getting ready for a movie with Grandma.

Gangs: A Follow Up

Right you are...no Harriet yet.

I am, and forever will be, the creator and head bad-a$$ mommyhumper of the hardcore gang Lovers 4 Life.  See, one night I was watching the histrionics that Seattle passes off as local evening news (we don't have cable, and I'll admit that it is incredibly tiring to be earnest book reading liberals at times (c'mon, how many Economist articles can I read about how Hugo Chavez is trying to set up a South American Legion of Doom), so you just sit there and flip through the broadcast channels until you find something that doesn't make you want to grind your teeth until the pain makes you pass out...because drinking until unconsciousness is technically bad for your self-righteousness).  First we saw a story, for real-real, about how a local fireman, seriously - I'm not making this up, saved a woman's cat from the utility pole outside her house.  It was considered news because the fireman noticed a smoldering transformer, or some other made up sh!t, and supposedly saved the block from burning to the ground.  This seemed like preemptive news to me.  They didn't have a transformer or high tension wiring specialist on camera talking about how a disa...forget it, I'm digressing.

Anyway, another story came on about the looming gang problem in Seattle.  Of course, having lived in California for a couple of years (from 6.5-8.75 years old) I immediately scoffed at Seattle's cry against gang violence and told Mommy that I could, within the hour, come up with my own gang (NOTE TO SEATTLE GANG MEMBERS:  I would like to point out that you are probably far more hardcore than me or anyone I know, so please don't feel the need to illustrate your gangness - is that even the vernacular you're using these days - and street prowess on me or my family...I'm just saying that the relative situations of Seattle and, say Compton, North Philly...well, you get my point).

No sooner had I thought it than I had spoken it:  Lovers 4 Life.  Once you name something, it's for real.  Yeah, it doesn't sound that hardcore, but if you understood how much I love Mommy, you'd actually be pretty freaked out (there's this math equation that I once saw while doing my advanced studies in Awesome Nerdness that was so complex and contained so much raw energy that it made me blind in one eye for a week and left a tinnitus like ringing in my ears that had strong echos of American Woman by The Guess Who.  Well, once, just so that Mommy would stop asking me how much I loved her, I made a transparency of that equation and then overlaid one quarter of the equation that I'd been working on to prove that my love for Mommy was an order of uncountable infinity larger than, say, the Conundrum Quotient of the confluence of complicated events that allowed George W. Bush to become the president of the most powerful country in the world [following a Rhodes Scholar mind you].  When I projected the synergistic equation (a branch of mathematics that I invented just to explain this whole thing to Mommy) everyone in the world could, for an instant, all speak, read, and understand the subtleties of non verbal queues of Ancient Japanese.  So, don't just scoff at a name until you understand the source ).

What, is someone dangling keys somewhere right now?   

Let's get to the point.  L4L is hardcore forevah.  The gang sign is simple, but I think it's going to take a bit of time for Harriet to achieve the digital mastery necessary.  To see the sign yourself, simply place your left hand in front of you, palm away, and make an L with your thumb and index finger.  Now, take your right hand, palm facing you, and make an L with your thumb and index finger.  Now take the thumb portion of your left handed L and cross it over the vertical portion of your right handed L.  If you look closely, you'll notice L4L.  I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out how to change your hand positioning so that others can see the sign.

Harriet, Daddy is crazy tired as he's been running loads of anxiety errands in this big snow storm while waiting for you to come and Mommy wouldn't let him take a nap, so no more for today.

Sorry Daddy hasn't written in your pregnancy journal more.  I'm sure you'll wind up being a crack-smoking beggar with withering skin and black bean teeth because of it.  Mommy will make up for all the life gouging mistakes I'll make.

OMG, my iPhone talks directly with the Interwebs

Oh, no.  It appears that Daddy can easily post via his craptastic iPhone.  I'm definitely turning it on for instant post as opposed to review and edit so that I can put rhubarb (it's not nice to say retarded) content up as it streams into my head.

Harriet, you might hear Mommy say that Daddy has verbal diarrhea, which is not especially nice, though true.  Now she'll also be able to say that Daddy has blogging diarrhea thanks to his junktacular iPhone (featuring the new application Dropped Call v2.2).

Bed Rest and the Type AAA Personality

Still no Harriet today.  I don't suppose it's very surprising considering that most first babies are 7-10 days late for white women, which sounds like some crazy racist sh!t that our doctor tried to support with figures, tables and a ridiculous outfit that included a pointy white hat...no, just kidding, we're so progressive we're not even seeing a doctor...the Interweb told me the above demo-racist-graphic info...in a dream.  In the dream the Interwebs also told me that if I could completely unroll a Taco Time crisp bean burrito without a single flake falling to the ground, I would be granted the key to perfect, stress-free parenting.  So suck it, stack of expensive and fear mongering parenting books.

But for real real, Mommy was put on bedrest by our midwife a week and a half ago and that's something that she's not really built for.  The conundrum comes in the form of asking a type AAA personality to basically play dead for a couple of weeks, something this kind of person is not necessarily good at, so they try really hard to relax and then get stressed out about relaxing and if they're doing it right.  Fortunately Mommy has found the key to success as she's doing an excellent job of relaxing...which is only sometimes interrupted by Daddy's need to express his Ya-Ya's (it's not just dirty, it's also cabin fever).  Mommy is very good at first trying to talk with Daddy, and then quickly realizing that his Ya-Ya count is too high, in which case she ejects him from the room and possibly the house.

Daddy's Ya-Ya's are going through the roof right now, and that's why he's being sent to work out.

We'll talk about our hardcore gang soon.  Daddy developed a pretty sweet gang sign and everything.  Oh, Harriet, we can't wait to jump you in.

The Due Date Has Passed

It's 1:58am PST on 12/23/2008.  It is absolutely official that my wife is still pregnant and that my daughter is now several hours past due.  Every 24 hour period from now until I hear miss Harriet's first cry is a minefield of possible husband fuckups.  If no one hears from me again, know that it was during this time that I made my fatal mistake.

Daddy