Waiting and Hoping

This past week I have experienced delayed nesting. Since we were ready for Baker, we had little to do to get ready for this little one other than waiting and hoping. Waiting and hoping, it turns out, have kept us pretty busy. Waiting and hoping and distracting ourselves with an ancient barn of a house in a spot on a hill that is rapidly growing on me.

Last week the logjam broke - for whatever reason - and I found myself painting the inside of a cabinet at 10:30 at night (in Massachusetts). Earlier that night I had stripped wallpaper from the 1980's, the 1960's, and perhaps, from the 1940's, from the back of the cabinet, and replaced it with clean white paint.

Baker had interrupted our kitchen remodel last year - we got close enough - even painting a wall while Dalene was on the couch in labor. Since babies don't usually concern themselves with cabinet interiors, I let a few of them go unpainted.

We have washed 30 some odd diapers, and have rewashed clothes that were last laundered before our fateful day on April 3, 2008. They were, if anything, dusty and sad that they had never been worn by their intended occupant, but they seemed ready to be brand new hand-me-downs.

I made one last run up to the Farm on Friday night (with the car seat in the back...), one last check and lawn cutting before we are joined by the hoped-for baby on July 6. After scaring a few chipmunks out of the house and making sure everything was buttoned up, I went for a quick walk, constantly moving to keep the mosquitoes from carrying me off to their insect lair.

Walking through the field along the edge of the woods, I nearly stepped on a tiny spotted fawn, bedded down in the grass. As it darted off into the dark forest, I was struck by a feeling of life and renewal and I hope that it was a good sign that the boy in the womb will join us soon, eyes wide, chest rising and falling, living and growing so that he and I can explore those woods together, in a place that we are building in Baker's memory, for years to come.