Psych! (Sike?)

This is how it looked outside this morning. I'd like to remind you that it's December. We bought two pints of local strawberries. Strawberries! Are growing! In December!
These cabbages were bigger than my belly. I am not exaggerating.
Homemade hot-chocolate. To force it to feel like the holidays.

Baby teased us on Thursday, when a pattern of small contractions and strong kicking-and-stretching continued all day at school. Stefin got wide-eyed and I a bit teary when I told him "I don't know, maybe..." while swooping him from his classroom. Called Emmy, our midwife, with whom we already had an appointment, but by the time we met at 5, contractions had stopped and there wasn't any notable amount of dilation. Like Emmy said, there's no reason we should be trying to get this baby out early; it's not excessively large, and there are no other concerns, so really we should just be relaxing while it continues to cook and layer up with useful body fat that will help keep it warm here on the outside. Still, I can't say I wasn't disappointed.

We have a golden present underneath our little Christmas tree (in a pot, adorned with Home-Depot-installed glitter), and Stefin was exasperated by the waiting. "Really? We have to look at that for 25 days before we can open it?" How about nine months of anticipation? (I guess we didn't officially know for almost 2, but still... seven months is a lot of waiting.)

It's very strange, "humbling," is the word Stefin has been using lately, to be at this point. We know it's going to come, but we don't know exactly when. There's going to be this second that labor is going to start, and then that day is going to be exhausting and intense. And then we are going to be parents. Forever.

The due-date is one week from tomorrow. The average first pregnancy lasts 41.5 weeks though, and both S and I were 2 weeks late. Although I would be delighted by a punctual baby, I'm going to do my best not to put all my cards on the 12th. I also would love if Baby decided to come while my mom was here... but it would be great if it could come right at the beginning of her visit. The more particulars I think about, however, the more sure I am that I'm jinxing it and the only thing that is certain is that it won't be like I expect.

(I've had a couple of uterine pains while writing this post, but since they've started happening so often in the past weeks, and since Thursday's false alarm, I have no confidence in assigning any meaning to them.)

This part is like circling up in the plane that time, round and round and round again, knowing that it will be fun, and it is kind of crazy, but it's too late now: you are going to jump out of it.

((((((((anticipation))))))))))