Hanging In, Hanging Out, Hanging On

One night of irregular but pretty good contractions, a couple nights of questionable sleep, but no baby yet.

So...here are some things we've been up to in the meantime:

Climbing on heavy equipment. A town near ours has a public works day each year and they let the kids come climb into the big tractors, buses, dump trucks, etc. Greatest thing ever. There really should be a park somewhere that just has heavy equipment for climbing...Of course, guess what Calvin said when he saw this picture? "It's me!!! In my soccer shirt!!!" Because he is the consummate soccer player, you know.

Being stalked by squirrels. This one was literally clinging to my drivers side window (how do they do that?!) immediately after I closed my door the other day. I turned to grab my seatbelt, and there he was, through the pane about two inches from my face. Creeeeeepy. And what is more is that he could have landed on my lap, had I not closed the door just when I did. Made me jump out of my skin. And then he would not leave the mirror. And then jumped to the windshield. And then was peaking down from the roof of the car, and I was afraid to back out, envisioning a Stuart Little-type adventure for the rodent when I hit twenty or thirty miles an hour. Or worse, the sickening kathunk-thunk should he fall and land in my driving path. They are rodents, but they are living, after all. He finally left me alone and I was able to go to my doctor in relative peace.

Filling water guns. The pocket change I spent on these little guns was totally worth it if you count the hours of entertainment they have provided in the last week. At first I was questioning the purchase because I seemed to be required to refill them - and since they are so small that they only hold four squirts of water, that was a lot of refilling - but of course it was no time at all before Henry had it all figured out. And those fat little hands filling that tiny little water gun? Priceless.

Learning how to big brother a baby. We took Cal and Henry to a little class at the hospital today so they could learn all about what a baby does. "Cries, eats, poops and sleeps" is Henry's summary. They were shown how to change the baby's diaper, how to swaddle it, and got to pretend to feed it a bottle. Among other things, the nurse who taught explained two very important rules: 1. Never pick the baby up without Mom or Dad's help, and 2. Never feed the baby anything without Mom or Dad. I am especially grateful for those instructions, coming from an official person and all. They also gave the boys official doctor hats and took all of us up to the maternity ward where we could look in the nursery window and they held up the most perfect little newborn. Even Calvin was impressed with the tiny-ness. The boys also got certificates of graduation and "big brother" buttons with their pictures on them to wear to the hospital when they come to visit after the baby is born.

Which may be soon, and may be not...Of course, labor and delivery is all that is on my brain, I feel like I'm eight weeks overdue and my due date hasn't even come yet.

I don't necessarily want to subject you, Dear Internets, to that kind of obsessiveness, so I might not blog unless I have something non-gestational to talk about.

Or a new baby son to show off.

Until then, no news is...no news.