This Blog Is Going To The Beach

Two years ago, my in-laws planned a wonderful vacation for themselves, my wife and I (then dating), and their son and daughter-in-law. The Scandianvian cruise was going to last ten days and pass through countries I had never visited before. Plans were scuttled when my sister-in-law got pregnant.

Last year, my in-laws planned a wonderful vacation for themselves, my wife and I (now married!), and their son and daughter-in-law. The very same Scandinavian cruise was going to last ten days and pass through countries I have never visited before. My in-laws were the first to know of my wife's pregnancy, in equal parts happiness, joy, and "hope the deposit is refundable."

Who needs intercontinental travel when the beach is just three hours away? We're packing up our things and heading east for a few days of R & R with our in-laws. We'll be without internet for the duration (let alone that we'll also have 80% of this blog's readership under the same roof next week).

See ya Wednesday, tanned, rested, and ready.

This Post Now Has A Title

There are six pillows in my house and currently five of them are adjacent to My Lovely Wife. The sixth lays on my side of the bed. This doesn't include the curved body pillow, who we affectionately call "Mr. Snuggle" that is currently next to the bed, should my wife need it. The last time there were this many pillows on my bed, I was making a fort.

If you are not, like me, a first-time expectant father, you may have stopped reading after the second sentence, where I claim to retain a "side of the bed." That statement may just invalidate every other thing I have written. Well, here we are, five and a half months into this pregnancy and I still have a side of the bed. I don't always sleep there.

It's no secret, either. After giving some men updates on how far along my wife is, they follow up with, "Are you sleeping on the couch yet?" The answer is, sometimes. We also have an air mattress. Where I sleep on any given night depends on several variables: how she feels, when I am coming to bed (beyond 30 minutes of her), when I have to wake up, how bad my breath is perceived to be, etc.

Tonight I placed two pillows under my wife's feet for the first time. I've marveled publicly about the physical changes a woman must withstand during gestation. Once again, I have no response or basic comprehension of how it must feel to be expecting. You would think that sleep - a time when even physical injuries can seem healed - would provide respite for an aching mother-to-be. But you'd be wrong. The closer a woman is to nine months, and the larger her belly is, the more difficult it is for her to sleep, in any position. It's already a chore to walk, to sit, to anything we take for granted, but for sleep to be elusive on top of it all, that's just cruel.

So I wisely sleep outside of our bed from time-t0-time. Tonight, I'm hoping to get a few hours of shut-eye on that Queen size pillow-top we paid so much for, but if not, that's understandable. And if i do? Well, I'll try not to steal the covers.

UPDATE No. 1 - Remember, when blogging late at night, to write your title first, otherwise, you'll just plain forget.

UPDATE No. 2 - I did not, as expected, sleep in my own bed last night. I tried to, but found my wife sleeping in a position that can only be described as "diagonal sprawl." Unable to find room for me, I retreated to the second bedroom.

Love Is...

Love is spending eight hours in a tiny car with your wife, driving from store to store, plopping your butt into dozens of sofas, watching a holiday slowly slip away, deciding that the sofa you want was the first you saw and that you could have been home at noon (instead of 7:30 pm), with nothing to do but install a new flat panel HDTV...and look back and think about how good a day you had.