Bottles in Waiting

There are baby bottles in our kitchen cabinets, there are diapers hanging behind the nursery door. There is a second car seat riding expectantly in Moonshot’s car and there is a newly replenished bottle of whiskey atop the fridge. Yes, the House of Gren is ready for a second go-round at this whole parenting thing. True, some of us are more ready than others. For myself, I’m excited to meet my son, but I’m not sure how that compares to my wife’s desire to have the still-mysterious tyke stop pummeling her kidneys, stomping her small intestines, elbowing the back of her ribs, and generally making her grimace unexpectedly at all hours of the day and night. Lutine is also quite ready. She has painted young Dean many pictures and continually requests that we buy infant toys at the store, announcing that they are “so cute” and “Baby Dean needs that.” Her new favored play locale is Dean’s room…rattles and plush toys spread across the floor with a “how will Baby Dean play with this?”

In all, we’re as prepared as we can be…which is to say ready to be blindsided.

We’ve scheduled a C-Section for November 18^th but are keeping our fingers crossed that we won’t reach that cut-off. Given her choice, Moonshot would rather go for the natural childbirth that brought us Norah. However, for reasons that are perhaps a bit more graphic than some of the readers here are likely to want…she’s unwilling to go natural on a baby as big as Norah again. And so, we’ve given Dean his first parental ultimatum. “If you’re not outta that uterus by the count of three, young man…the doctor is coming in after you!” To which young Dean is apparently replying with his sister's sense of defiance. there being absolutely no movement toward birth in the week preceding yesterday's check-up. "Yeah?" he says. "Come and get me, then." Of course, if he is truly like our Lutine...he'll make a mad dash for the exit just as we go into surgery prep.

In addition to our family, the entire neighborhood seems ready for Dean to join the community. They threw a shower for us a few weeks back and there is apparently a sign-up sheet floating around to supply meals to the new parents. If I haven't said so before, allow me to say now that I love our new neighborhood. I still miss the actual house we left last year, but the trade off has been well worth it. Between all the extra tools I now have access to in the neighbors' garages, the number of kids Norah and Dean will be able to play with, and the general wonder of living among a group of people who care about what you're doing without prying...I'm getting used to suburbia. I am sad, however it report that my friend three doors down...we'll call him Bob Appleton...lost the dollar he put into the "when will the Gren's have their baby" pool. He had picked yesterday and I was really hoping he was right...Moonshot and I were really hoping to have gotten started on that whiskey by this weekend.