March 31, 2007

Fat friends?

I just got an e-mail with the subject line: "Make your fat friends envy you." At this point, I'm not sure I have any friends fatter than me. So, I deleted the e-mail.

I have been overwhelmed with excitement and anticipation at the arrival of this little boy. 55 days left until my due date. So, I'm hoping for about 45 days until delivery. Have I blogged about my May 11 thing yet? If I have, forgive me, because I'm going to write about it again.

May 11 - 12 would be the perfect days for labor/delivery. Our Prime Time retreat would just be finishing, Kyle would have the weekend off from baseball games and would still be able to make it to his Monday game. And, it would give us a full three weeks before staff training. I realize that I've pretty much doomed myself to delivering after my due date for making such plans, but I can dream, can't I? I've had talks with the baby about when I'd like him to start making his way into the world, but I'm not really sure if he's listening. If flailing and kicking is any signal of comprehension, then he totally understands.

Anyway, back to my excitement . . . Kyle painted the nursery today. I LOVE the color. For those of you who know how wishy-washy I've been about the paint colors in our house (there's no room that hasn't been painted at least two colors . . . some up to four), you'll know what a success it is to love the color on the first try. I can't wait to get some furniture in there and start putting things away. I should have taken a picture of our other spare bedroom before I organized things. Everything we've received for the baby was just dumped there for a while and it was insane.

Kyle and I have been referring to him by his name a lot more when it's just the two of us. And I've come REALLY close to slipping in front of other people on a couple of instances. I just like calling him by his name. I ordered something the other day with his name embroidered on it and we just kind of sat there and looked at it for a while when it arrived. I can't wait to introduce him to everyone!

As he's started kicking more and more, I've become more and more attached to him. I've always had a hard time understanding how I'd experience so much bonding with my baby before he's born, but I get it now. I've felt gradual levels of attachment from the day I heard his heartbeat. I feel like I know a little bit about his personality and that he knows me a little. Kyle had a chance to feel him REALLY kick last night. I don't think he realized exactly how much the baby moves and kicks until he sat there with his hand on my belly for a half hour straight. He was amazed.

I've heard three people who just had babies in the last 2 - 3 weeks refer to the first few weeks as "a lot of fun" and that's encouraging because all people seem to tell me about are horror stories of how awful the first few weeks are. I know that having a baby is hard, but I think from now on I'm going to stop listening to people who only give me feelings of drudgery and gloom about the first few weeks. After all, can anyone tell me that it's not worth it?

One word about Kyle before I close this post . . . I'm amazed at his resilience and integrity. He's had a really rough couple of weeks and has handled everything with so much grace that I find myself getting annoyed when he doesn't want to fight dirty and lose his temper. I guess it's just another reminder to me of how lucky I really am.

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