I'm trying to do a million things before tomorrow, but wanted to jot down a few notes. Because with all of the excitement and nervousness and cleaning and visitors and everything else, I don't want to forget that Nicolaus is a butterfly with blue wings. Or that I'm a chicken and I have bitties (baby chickens) that need to be tended to and fed, and that Nicolaus is not one of my bitties, he's "just a guy named Nicolaus who feeds the bitties". Every morning he asks me where my bitties are, and I tell him, and he goes and feeds them for me. And they preciate that.

I don't want to forget that his favorite new word is "fascinated" and that the way he says it it sounds like he's saying that he is "wery assasinated" by something.

And I want to remember that this week he started narrating his life like a book. As in he'll say something… "I need some more syrup." and then he'll add, "Said the boy". Or occasionally he'll repeat back something we just said, in book speak. "You can have more syrup in a minute! Cried the boy's Mama."

It's very weird. Cool. But weird.

And that this week is all about Mama and how I'm his favorite mama and how he and Daddy and I all got married because we love each other so much.

This week is also about whining and having constant potty accidents and throwing crazy fits, but we don't necessarily need to remember that. The dude is two. He's allowed to act totally immature once in awhile.

Still, he seems excited about the new baby, but nervous too. He's carrying around a baby doll and asking us to show him how to hold it and how to put it in the swing. I think he might be worried that he's going to be in charge of this baby's care, and he's not totally sure he's up to the task. Which, I can honestly relate to a little bit.

I want to remember that this afternoon I was frantically working on a web site (I hate Paypal. Love the client but seriously OMG Hate, hate, hate paypal) that I'd like to get done today so we can hopefully get a check next week that will help pay for some of the hospital bill… so I was all focused on silly grown up work that I was doing to solve boring and silly grown up problems instead of cuddling with Nicolaus and making him feel that all is right with the world. And while I was proofing my work and writing an email and expecting a phone call from one of Kevin's clients, Nicolaus crawled up next to me and layed himself flat across my lap, knocking the phone over and pushing his way in between me and the laptop. He hugged my arm with one hand and said, "Mama, if you be really really good… you will get a baby."

Yikes, it's true. Even if I'm not really really good. On FRIDAY.

Cool. But very weird.

WHERE ARE THE TUMS?

Did I say acceptance? Cheesecake. Step twelve is cheesecake.

Most women are somewhat apprehensive about the experience of labor and delivery, ultimately moving through 12 important emotional stages before they give birth. This is particularly true of women who have had children before because although nature provides powerful hormonal surges to help women forget their experience as quickly as possible, nature also provides them with internet and WebMD.com and stupid online journals where women record every sick detail and then for some reason in the middle of the night feel the need to go back and read it all so they can remember exactly what it was like to eject an infant out of their body.

The emotional stages preceding delivery of a new baby are:
1 – Denial
2 – Anger
3 – Bargaining
4 – Depression
5 – Acceptance
6 – Wait. A what’s going to what? Out of my what?
7 – Holy crap holy crap holy crap crap crap
8 – Strong desire to run away to Bermuda, keep baby in uterus forever
9 – Weird dreams about labor and delivery that involve giving birth in a back room at Babies backwards-R Us, as part of a service they offer with the purchase of any sling or infant carrier, in which baby is delivered by a heavily-pimpled employee named Brad while other customers watch and comment loudly on the timing of contractions, size of belly, and probable massive size of the baby.
10 – What was I thinking??
11 – Seriously. WHAT?
12 – Acceptance.

Yesterday I was at stage 8. All day long. I even packed a bag. Oh sure, I called it my hospital bag, but I know Kevin had to be a little suspicious when he saw me putting my maternity bathing suit and a giant tropical-print beach towel in there.

This morning I’m at stage 10. Hopefully I’ll reach 12 by Friday. If not, I promise to continue posting from Bermuda.

Well, it appears that all of our loved and moderately well-liked ones are fine. We don’t know many details yet on flooding or the state of anyone’s property but everyone is safe and alive. And the weather here is amazingly storm-free.

G-fresh gave us another exciting false alarm trip to the hospital last night. I started to think “Weird, why does this always happen late at night on the weekends?” but then I realized that it’s because whenever anything interesting happens during normal hours I just go to the doctor. A lot of Murphy’s Law stuff works like that. But this time I was really worried that a baby might come out. I just felt so crappy all day yesterday and I was in a terrible mood, so I thought maybe that was my body’s way of telling me that a baby was going to come out. But no, I was just having a bitchy day. It happens sometimes.

I have lots of pictures I want to upload. Nothing fancy, but I’m documenting the heck out of the last few days of this pregnancy. I’ve also issued myself a No-frump promclamation: I will look as cute as possible every dang day until Friday. Because based on my hideously frumpy, leaky, grody, pimply, stretch-marky, flabby. floppy post-partum days after Nicolaus was born, this is the sexiest I’m going to feel for a long time. So I’m wearing dresses, putting on makeup, and sometimes even washing my hair.

We still don’t have a middle name for this baby. Yesterday my family was all about suggestions, which is always a little stressful because there are only so many polite and cheerful ways to say, oh my God no, we would stab ourselves in the throat before naming our child that. My grandmother is especially incredible at coming up with names designed to invite bullies to beat your child up. Some of them made ME feel like beating him up and taking his lunch money, and that’s just crazy and sad. It’ll be years before he even had lunch money. But really? Some of these names make me want to GIVE him lunch money just so I could beat him up and take it. So yeah.

Then my mom got into the act and started suggesting family name from her family. Most of which are beautiful, but they’re all Spanish and seriously, it’s amazing if Kevin’s family pronounced normal American names correctly. We never did call Nicolaus “Nico”, partly because Kevin’s dad insisted on making it Nick-oh. Which is clearly abusive and wrong.

My uncle did come up with two very helpful suggestions. I got an email from him the other night that said,
Niece,In order to help ease your weary load and that of your weary husband, I have taken it upon myself as your only uncle with human DNA to select the name of your son. He shall be called: G. Jordan Cash Robert Edward Lee James Bowie Butler Houston Jagger Hunter Keith John Wayne Lennon Miles Hudson (so we can call him “Hud”) Stonewall Jackson Padgett Mahill Merle Travis Eliot Anthony Lincoln Jasin Wesley Remnar Ruprecht Wolfgang Mozart Ludwig Franz Darwin Zechariah Zebulun Sassafrass (just to see if anyone might think that he has one of those typical snotty yuppie names or some of that other stuff white people name their children these days that’s like, so made up, not that that is a problem should you want to name him something pompous like Coy or Little Booger. Anyway…) Fidel Guevara Texas Red Vladimir Napoleon Tacitus Herodotus Gibson Martin Northcutt Lyndon Remington Winchester Madison Franklin Balanchine Rodin Russell Harte Benton Adams Jefferson Lincoln Meriwether Clark Heinz Guderian Richtoven George Patton Rommel Ney Mikail Barishnikov Gene Kelley Secretariat Admiral Yehudi Gustav Mahler Lawrence Allenby Eisenhower Tiberius Augustus Germanicus Stearman Von Zeppelin Kevin Ard.

That’s better.

And you know, I really do like a surprising number of those suggestions. I just think it sounds a litle cumbersome and pretentious to use them all. We’ll see though, all options are still open at this point.