Denial is a river in Egypt (t-minus 1 day until the Little Miss arrives)

The day before the Little Man was born, I was in denial. People would tell me that “your life is going to change forever” and I didn’t really believe them.  I knew it would change, but I figured folks were being melodramatic because that’s how people are. They were especially careful to tell me just how much sleep I’d no longer get. I didn’t really believe that either. I was in denial.

I’m still in denial, I think. Tomorrow, the Little Miss arrives and I am still thinking to myself that maybe it won’t be quite as bad as last time. After all, I’ve been through this once before, I have one infant experience under my belt. I’m better prepared. We’ll be more efficient. We’ll get more sleep than we did the last time around. Forget the fact that we didn’t have a two-year old toddler to contend with lats time around. Forget the fact that it has been two years since we’ve dealt with an infant. It’ll be okay. It won’t be like last time.

Yeah, denial.

This day creeps up on you no matter how much you are aware of it. It’s nine months away, then it’s three months away, then it’s a few weeks away, then a week, then a few days and here we are! Roughly twenty-four hours from when the Little Miss will be born. How does that happen?

I am trying to reverse the denial. I keep trying to prepare myself. I’ve been collecting sleep. We’ll see how it goes.

Of course, the first day isn’t bad. She’ll arrive around 7:30am, immediately after we’ve had a full night’s sleep. The excitement of the day helps carry you through. In fact, it won’t be until the day after she is born that those sleep effects will start to be felt. By that time, you’ve been up a few times with her during the night. You’ve managed to get some sleep but probably not more than four hours at a stretch. We’ll be at the hospital for a few days, but hopefully home by Monday and then we can start settling into a routine. Doing that sooner, rather than later, helps.

At some point tomorrow, I’ll get a post out announcing her birth. I don’t post pictures of the kids here, but there will be pictures and other information in other places, like Facebook, so if you are a Facebook friend, you’ll see them there. It’s hard to say how the frequency of my posting will change over these next few weeks and I’m not going to try to predict it, other than to say I’ll be doing my best to get out one post a day. The next Vacation in the Golden Age episode will be out on schedule this week and the next Wayward Time Traveler column will be out on schedule next week.

I’ll tell you this, in addition to being excited over the Little Miss’s arrival, I’m also excited that I’ll have a month off work. Today is my last day at the day job until September 19. I really need the break. I realize that it’s not really a vacation, since I’ll have an infant and a two-year old at home to take care of, but it is most certainly a mental vacation from the strain of the day job and that is something that I can really use.