Try a little tenderness (instead of pissiness)

I was up and around after 4 hours sleep.

The "up" part has become a lot more challenging this past week. It's something I do s-l-o-w-l-y so the baby weight in my uterus has time to shift with me. If I get up too quickly it just plain hurts, so I ease into a standing position and make my way around the house with the help of the walls until I've got my equilibrium and momentum. I cleaned the kitchen, fed the cats, took my morning vitamins, and got to work finishing the data migration from my old MacBook Pro to the new one. I know if I don't have it done before the baby comes it could be months before I've got a fully-functioning personal computer again.

The wind woke M up about 10 minutes earlier than his usual time. It's been gusting up to 40mph here for at least 36 hours and the wind downed a gorgeous old olive tree across the street yesterday. We spent a little time together before he fired up the computers for work and play, and by 10am I felt an uncontrollable urge to nap.

We had another workman come in today, and after I found dealing with yesterday's workman so tiring, M decided to work from home today to help me out. The window for his arrival was 9:30-11:00 and at 10:50am, while I was napping, M got into the shower. He thought the guy was going to be a no-show. Nope. At 10:55 the doorbell rang. Then some knocking. I yelled for M to get the door, not knowing he was in the shower. The doorbell rang again and more knocking. I realized that if I didn't get to the door soon, the guy might leave, and the hole in the wall (left by the plumber who repaired a leak in the master bath) would go un-repaired. So I leaped out of bed (a feat that hurt so badly my knees almost buckled) and hobbled to the door as fast as my legs and the walls would support me. This 60 foot dash had me a little out of breath as I opened the door, still in my pajamas and clutching at my belly. I'm sure I wasn't a pretty picture, and as a result of my humiliation and disappointment, I sought out poor M while he was still in the shower and got pissy with him. It took me about half an hour to get over my pissyness, even after he'd apologized a couple of times and gave me a hug. Grr.

The good news is the contractor did a great job of patching up our wall. If we had regular drywall I would have patched it myself, but we don't. The walls in our circa 1950 house have two layers of wallboard--one is cementboard and another is a plasterboard that was a precursor to sheetrock, for a combined thickness of about 3/4". I didn't feel like wrestling with trying to find a combination of furring strips and sheetrock that would make the right thickness to match the rest of the wall, or doing the amount of messy mudding (spackling) it would take to build the surface up if I had to use just 5/8" drywall--even if I wasn't 39 weeks pregnant :) The best thing about being "handy" is knowing how to do a cost-benefit analysis that helps determine whether or not to let a pro do the work.

This afternoon we snuggled a bit and had a mini-talk about how the baby is going to impact our lives. I told him he's going to have to step in as the primary source of attention for Jasper, who is a very social animal and needs interaction with his people, or he acts out. It's rather funny, actually.

I also told him that I want him to let me know if he is experiencing an attention deficit, because I'm going to be tuning into the baby's needs and may not be as attuned to his. I've gotten very good about letting him know what my needs are, even making an effort to give him advanced notice where I can, and I've also gotten very good at anticipating his needs (which he loves--who wouldn't?) but realistically, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to maintain that level of presence with a newborn on my hands. I know a lot of couples go through a tough time the first 6 months because the father feels like a third wheel and an afterthought and I'm hoping to avoid that by reminding M that he has a better chance of getting what he wants if he has the presence of mind to ask for it ;)

Tonight he plays poker with his friends, and I get the evening to myself. Probably the last evening alone in a long, long time.

Tomorrow night we'll have our Last Supper as a childless couple.

And Friday morning we initiate labor. Finally.

Wish me luck!