The waiting game
By Primal Sneeze ~ August 7th, 2007. Filed under: Kids, Life, Mothers.
There are some things in this world you never see. Like an ugly baby or a small rat. Our upbringing dictates that we squeal oh, (s)he’s gorgeous and jayzez, it’s feking huge respectively. The exception, of course, is a baby rat.
As I wrote in Snippets #9 below, my great friend Kathy is expecting her second – not rat, the other one – on Wednesday and I am on call to take care of her first, Seán, while she does the whole grunt, deep breath, push, scream thing. Then, when she has her bag packed and heads off to the hospital, for whatever she has to do there, Seán and I can get to work on that kitchen wall mural he’s been planning. He has been thinking about it for weeks now – he sits on the floor for long periods with a crayon in each hand, with one eye on the wall and one on his mum. I’m guessing he wants it to be a surprise. No point making a start while she’s watching.
I’m looking forward to the project, but the waiting is killing me. Not least because we’ve just had a long weekend and being art-director-on-call I couldn’t risk a single beer. Ireland may have had the wettest weekend on record/CD/DVD/Download but I certainly had the driest.
Now before anyone jumps down my throat about all the worry daddy is going through, let me point out it was all his doing. I didn’t have it in for him, so to speak.
To exacerbate things, all the lovely-baby doctors swore on their stethoscopes that Kathy would be anything up to a week early. (They obviously never arranged to meet her for lunch). Hence I’ve had my crayons in the boot of the car since the middle of last week.
I’ve had the phone on tone and vibrate at night in case I sleep through the call to arts. And it’s kept fully charged. Some meetings have been rescheduled as they are too far away. An overnight case is packed. I continually check there’s plenty of fuel in the tank.
Kathy is wondering who is actually having the baby.
Well I suppose it will all be worth it the day I get to blubber oh, (s)he’s gorgeous. It can’t be long now – I seen a rat down by the river yesterday and jayzez, it was feking huge.
You should probably throw in some paints he may need to have more flexibility than the craynos offer.
I go with the paints!
Bring a large dish to put the paint in. Hands covered with paint make a much more impressive image!
Have fun.
PS Do you like paint sangers? They go down well with beer!
Another niece or nephew for Uncle Primal, art director.
Crayons break and paint takes too much time. My boys were partial to markers-Sharpies to be exact. Durability, speed and stealth-vital to the beginning mural artist.
But be mindful. Basking in the glow of your encouragement, he may discover that your car upholstery is also an excellent canvas!
Do you have Mr. Sketch smelly felts (or markers) over there? (http://www.dickblick.com/zz212/15/) Then you don’t have to worry about the beer because you and the little guy will both be high as kites from all the sniffing. Apparently they are washable but I think they mean more from underneath kids noses than getting it off walls.
Mac & Grannymar – Yeah, maybe paint might be the way to go. I could borrow some scaffolding from my builders so we do a proper ceiling height jobbie. We’ll finish with paint sammiges and beer.
Medbh – Don’t I know it. Christmas gets more and more expensive each year. This year’s cards will read Happy Christmas! Now, stop breeding would yez, for fek’s sake. Subtle hint, don’t you know.
Sugar & Melanie – You girls moonlighting for marker companies? If so, cut me a deal for a dozen assorted. Durability, speed, stealth and kid-removable are exactly what we need here.
Still no word?
FMC – Nothing stirring yet. I was around there yesterday and applied downward pressure during the goodbye hug, but to no avail. Jayzez, this could be my second dry weekend in a row.
By the way, All – Where’s the sympathy for poor old Primal here? Pretty soon I won’t remember what Guinness tastes like. *Wails, wrings hands* Ochón agus ochón!
No word yesterday … does that mean you and Mini Michelangelo are busy at work …?
Mem – I was just too busy with work yesterday to do anything blogwise. Same today, pretty much.
The thing that’s driving me and Kathy’s husband scatty is the specialist told them yesterday that there was absolutely no sign of anything happening and he’d see her again on Wednesday to discuss inducing it. That’ll be a whole fortnight without beer!
Folk are beginning to look at me strangely. You know the old saying: Never trust a camel, or indeed anyone, who can go two weeks without a drink.
I beg to differ about the ugly baby comment. My sister had a very hard time popping out my nephew. His faced was all bruised and swollen and he looked like a particularly ugly boxer who had gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. She’d take him out in the pram and people would start saying, “What a …….” then very quietly and uncertainly, “… beautiful baby,” obviously thinking there was something drastically wrong with him. He grew up to be beautiful, though, and is now a hulking 30-something dude!
Kit – She didn’t have to tie a steak around his neck to get the dog to play with him, did she?
Mad things can happen at birth. I know one kid who got her arm broken. The wee mite had a bandage for two weeks. They couldn’t put a cast on as babies grow so quickly. But that’s all it took – two weeks and it was fine. In fact the bones are even stronger in that arm. The doctors said if she breaks it again it will take twice as long as normal to mend because of that.