The Final Countdown

We can count the days until the baby comes on one hand, that is, if it's a five-fingered hand.  If you've lost a digit in a terrible lawnmower accident, you can start counting down the days tomorrow.  Regina is, of course, tired of the heat, tired of bumping her belly into everything, and tired of being tired (not that another baby is really going to help the latter).  I'm frightened and thrilled, like most expectant fathers, and am really looking forward to our hospital stay (room service! chair-beds! mini-vacation!).

Dylan, for her part, is blissfully indifferent.  She will acknowledge that, yes, Mommy is having a baby and that she will be a big sister soon, but any inquiries beyond, "Are you going to be a good big sister?" get ignored.  When we ask Dylan the baby's name she responds, "Sister" (Hint: that's not his name).  

Recently, we cleaned out Dylan's old room and made way for the baby.  Dylan thought we were reincarnating all her old toys and reverted to playing with rattles and breast pump cups.  It was hard explaining that her toys are no longer her toys.  I'm sure that rationale will get easier to comprehend as the baby gets old enough to physically take her toys on his own.  It'll be a hard lesson in sharing, that's for sure.

As we did when Regina was pregnant with Dylan, we are keeping the baby's name a secret.  I'm not exactly sure why, except we've noticed that people -- friends, family, total strangers -- tend to have no qualms about offering opinions about the names you've chosen.  If we were to say, "We're trying to decide between Adolph or Hiroshima.  (Hint: we've chosen neither)  We really like both and can't decide," the correct response is, "They're both great (or interesting, or fun, or ... names)."  It's not a poll or an opportunity to tell us about the dog named Hiro that bit you when you were three.  It's also not an appropriate time to make a face and say, "Yuk."  Our theory is that once the baby is born, it's hard to say to his face that you had a classmate in jr. high with the same name who ate his boogers and couldn't operate his pants' zipper on his own.  If you do, the baby can retaliate (vomit, poo throwing, hair pulling).

Our friends have told us that having two kids isn't twice as time consuming as one kid.  It seems that there is some universally weird mathematical formula that adding one more child causes the hours in a day to shrink by 2/3s.  We'll see.  We're as ready as we can be, though.  We have the baby's room set up, I have a fresh bottle of Bulleit Bourbon, and Dylan has hidden and put her name on all her toys.