Caroline and Alli, as seen waiting for Go Dot.
I feel guilty because I can tell that more and more of you are stopping by each and every day, very likely with the specific intent of finding out whether or not Grand Finale has begun his reign of planet Earth. And, well, he hasn’t. Which means each time you stop by, instead of some joyous birth announcement, all you’re getting are various snippets of mindless conversations which feature subjects as asinine as Rambo’s bandana, the Bang-Bang train and nipple stimulation as it pertains to NASCAR — all while we wait for the little fellow who’s starting to feel as if he might not ever get here.
But we know that he will, indeed, eventually arrive. And to that end, earlier today, a good friend of mine told me that she hoped Caroline and I were savoring every last moment of this pregnancy. And, well, I’m sorry to say that such is definitely not the case. But I think that’s only because of the extreme nature of this pregnancy. I’ve said it many times before, but it bears repeating: this pregnancy has proven to be much more difficult than even the triplet pregnancy, if for no other reason than the wee threesome which the triplet pregnancy successfully produced. Because it’s been tough for Caroline to enjoy being with child at age 41 (she turns 42 on July 25) in the dead heat of summer while tending to four kids, three of whom often climb on her as if she were a knocked-up jungle gym.
So no. She’s not savoring this one, but is instead really ready to get the show on the road. Me? I’m not sure I even know how to savor a pregnancy, given that I’m not pregnant. Not to mention the fact that I’ve never been one to go all ga-ga over a pregnancy a la singing lullabies to the embryo inside my wife’s expanding belly. Hell, I’m not even into putting my hand on her stomach when Grand Finale’s moving. For some reason (likely because I’m a squeamish wuss), it conjures up images of that scene from that Sigourney Weaver movie, Aliens (I think it was Aliens) when that horrifying entity pops out of that dude’s stomach.
Sigourney. What kind of name is that, anyway? Sounds more like a verb than a name, no? Which reminds me of this totally juvenile game I made up in college that my jackass friends and I used to play where we’d try to use a famous person’s first name as a verb and their last name as a direct object. And the best one I ever came up with was I’d like to Dick her Van Patten.
But I digress. Because the only game we’re playing now is the waiting game. Yesterday, a woman in my office asked me what the rush was. “I mean, if I were y’all, I wouldn’t be in any hurry whatsoever. After all, once Grand Finale gets here, things are really going to get tough.”
I suppose. I mean, I know it’ll be tough on the ice cream industry. Lord knows they’ll never be able to recoup all the lost revenue once Caroline’s nightly benders mercifully draw to a close. And I know it’ll be tough on us, too. Four months has always been our rule of thumb, as those first four months, by our estimation, are the most difficult.
But one reason why we want him to hurry up and get here is because of the inevitability of those four months. I mean, they’re gonna be tough, so we just as soon start the clock right now, thank you very much. Besides, we’re not scared of the difficulty because, this just in, we’ve (somewhat) successfully weathered the first three (nearly four) years of the triplets’ lives, and they’ve been anything but a piece of cake.
But the real reason we’re in a hurry? We so desperately want to start loving Grand Finale. Check that. We so desperately want to continue loving him. Only we’re ready for him to be sitting smack-dab in the middle of all our wonderful chaos while we’re doing just that.
If only that doctor would just Sigourney Caroline’s Weaver already and deliver that little guy to us.
Note: Thanks to Alan for his comment about what really happened in Aliens. I corrected my original version which had the alien popping out of Sigourney’s stomach.
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