Like a bad novel

If you were reading a novel or watching a TV show in which one principle character was planning to have a baby in eleven days, and the other was scheduling surgery for cancer at exactly the same time, you would find that a little melodramatic, wouldn't you?

Well, I apologize for the lame plot twist, but that's what's happening.

Last week Marci and I moved into our new (yet vintage) house (it was built in 1929). Mom and dad were going to come up last weekend, and dad planned to help with some fixing-up projects, but that all got put on hold after his test. However, they came up this weekend instead, and just left this morning after we had breakfast together.

We had a good time all weekend, eating at a great local Mexican place one night, and a good steak place the next, and finding time to go to IKEA for some house stuff. Dad and I also had some time to assemble some baby gear, like the stroller. He brought along The Peanut's crib he bought for us, and helped me get it up into the newly-carpeted and painted upstairs.

Dad also brought Marci and I the season one DVD set of Dead Like Me. He has been talking about the show for a while, and I hadn't seen it until we watched the pilot episode with him this weekend. If you don't know the show, I highly recommend it for it's wit, insight, humor, great production values, acting, and, best of all, its writing. The show focuses on the undead lives of grim reapers, who look more or less like normal people, but are charged with taking people's souls. They receive their assignments on post-it notes, and have to take crappy jobs just to make rent and feed themselves. Being a grim reaper, it turns out, amounts to a crummy clock-punching job with no real benefits and no room to advance career-wise. They get most of their assignments from a veteran reaper, Rube, who usually doles out the to-do lists to the other reapers over waffles in a neighborhood diner. The comedy is on the dark side, though the show has genuinely poignant moments and reflections on life, too. You can catch it on Showtime in its third season now, but you should start with the first two on disc.

Marci is having occasionally strong contractions, and we get what will likely be our last utrasound this coming Tuesday. So far, everything looks good: blood pressure, infant heart rate, non-stress test results, placental condition, cord flow, and fluid volume. They say he's on the big side, but the doctor just pinned that on me since I'm tall.

Dad is getting one more CT scan on Monday, and consulting with a surgeon on Tuesday, so we'll all know more in a couple days.

My Dad

My dad found out today that he likely has colon cancer. This was his first colonoscopy, and the doctor said that although the final assessment can only be made after the pathology report this Tuesday, he's pretty certain.

What's also certain is the dad will need abdominal surgery (as opposed to colorectal surgery). Even at this early diagnosis, the doctor said it looks like there is a 90-95% likelyhood that everything will ultimately be just fine.

Since I just found out, this all just seems like bits of information to me. I haven't really gotten my head around the fact yet. Mom and Dad had planned to come up this weekend, see our new house, and maybe help out with some painting. The test this morning was just to give dad some peace of mind. It will take all of us some time to let this new reality sink in.

The PostModerndad loves the big guy, and is sure that all will be well. I'm quite confident that this is just his version of the mid-60s-age scare a lot of people get, and that all of this will be behind us as quickly as possible.

Equipment totally rules

Everyone will tell you that babies need a lot of stuff. But what they don't tell you is that babies give you, the consumer, endless opportunity for guilt-free spending. Granted, I don't have much guilt about consumption anyway; it's what separates us from the animals and the French.

Marci and I have been preparing the nest, though we won't have our new house until Friday. I'll detail some of the items we went with after (my) extensive research.

Since they don't let you leave the hospital without one, we purchased this infant car seat from Peg Perego. Italians drive like nuts so I assume this seat is extra safe. I had officer B. from my local police department install the base for me, though it took me three visits to the station before I could successfully connect with a "car seat tech." On one of the visits, the officer had been called away to address an attempted suicide. I asked the dispatcher what she thought was more important, some random unsuccessful suicide, or my car seat? After all, I had an appointment.

I mentioned in an earlier post how frightening most bassinets are, so we had a bit of trouble finding one that didn't look like home to Rosemary's Baby. I was initially sold on this number, but, given the fact that The Peanut might only use it for a couple months, I decided to scale back a bit and go with this one from Eddie Bower. It's actually tough, overall, to find baby items in calm hues. I wanted to avoid electronic music generating gizmos, since they're usually annoying and tacky, but the EB bassinet does play a few tunes. We'll just leave the batteries out of it.

However, after swearing off infant electronica, I found this swing by Fisher-Price. It's unique because it plays "white noise" like frogs, rain, and crickets. I heard the sample online and it sounded pretty relaxing to me. I actually wasn't even in the market for a swing, but a woman in my office for the past few weeks has been yelling about how she couldn't have survived without one. I went ahead and also purchased the related bouncer, since it was available off the shelf. I'm also ordering this bouncer, which beats the Fisher-Price version on style points.

I spent an inordinant amount of time determining which stroller we would buy. I was totally sold on the Bugaboo Frog, until I saw one in real life. It had little in the way of storage, and the design everyone raves about just didn't grab me as much in peson. I know that Bugaboo folks will totally disagree, since they're kind of a religious cult, but I do think that dropping almost a thousand bucks on a stroller motivates them to heap praise on it to justify the expense.

With some research and the help of two great woman at a nearby baby boutique, we went with the Valco Runabout. The company began in Austrailia, I learned, and their strollers are starting to get popular here. I was really impressed with how easily the thing collapses, plus, you can steer it with one hand. The front wheel has a swivel lock for faster travelling, though I'll have to get a true jogger if I want to do serious running next spring.

For visiting the parents or travelling other places, this play yard from Combi seemed like a good choice. Marci's sister bought it for us, and it will really be useful. It's still all boxed up for our impending move, but it looks quick to assemble. Again, it was low on the overly happy vivid color scale, and was absent of ruffles and frillys, so it caught our attention. Combi also has cool stuff for later, like a training version of chopsticks for kids.

We looked up and down the price scale for cribs, and eventually settled on a straightfoward model from Target. It has storage beneath, and has gotten all sorts of rave reviews from people who use it. I've seen "modern chic" cribs for much more, with pretty similar design. My parents just ordered this for us, and we picked up a matching changing table.

Looking ahead, I'm looking forward to getting The Peanut some of these dudes from KidRobot, which has to be the world's coolest toy site. I'm probably just shopping for myself in this case.

We're taking the hospital tour this weekend, so more on that soon . . .