Chris

I have to say - now that I'm heading into last 4 weeks of this pregnancy trip - (at least it's 4 weeks till my due date) - I have to say that Chris has been extremely good about this whole process.

He has been

• reading books,
• going to classes,
• signed up to try cloth diapers and
• even ventured into Babies R Us with me on not one - but two occasions.

I mean - that's not too bad and I definitely can't complain. The only persistent weird thing so far has been his inability to believe me when I tell him I am not hungry. For the past 3 weeks - the evening conversation will include the following dialog:

Kathy: What do you want for dinner?
Chris: What do *you* want for dinner?
K: I don't care. I'm not really hungry for anything.
C: Do you want "fill in the blank" food?
K: Okay.
C: What about "choice 2"?
K: Okay.
C: Which one?
K: I don't care. I will eat either and neither sound good or bad to me.

This is probably the one thing that seems to perplex him the most - but I am so happy to overlook this because....

He put the crib together without a manual.

Now - it's not like he decided to flex his testosterone and threw the manual aside while he tackled the crib. We inherited my sister's crib which is in great shape. And I'm super thankful since having a baby is a bigger money pit than any "project car" your husband can find on Craig's list.

But I digress... the crib came with all the pieces, hardware, carefully wrapped and in storage for the past 7 years or so. It was great. It is great. It is going to be great. But it was going to need some assembly.
I am totally up for any Ikea home furniture assembly project. I can decipher the weird diagrams, the wordless instructions and the Swedish logic for how they think this should work. But throw a disassembled crib at me with nothing at all - and I pretty much turned my brain off for the evening. We didn't even have the good fortune of having DIS-assembled it 7 years ago. That might have been a bit of help... So instead, it's me, Chris, Bandit and the parts in the bedroom.

I decided to take on my Assistant role and stood there, trying hard to not convey the complete sense of despair that started to creep into my head. Luckily - even if I *had* managed to let it out - I don't think Chris would have noticed. He was clearly lost deep in thought as he stared at the different pieces and hardware that was tucked in the zip-loc bag.

I won't go into the details, but let me just say this - THANK GOD ONE OF US ISN'T PREGNANT. I don't know how he did it - but that crib is up - fully functional and I think it's even SAFE to put a baby in. There was one little mis-hap with a piece installed upside down, but we figured that out pretty quickly and 2 minutes later were back on track.

If I had been left alone to do this - I probably would have just called the nearest baby store and had them deliver a new crib - because I don't think there is any way in hell I could have pulled that off in my current mental state. I don't think I'm psycho crazy with hormones, but I know I'm not at my sharpest right now either......

Not that I had any fears before this moment, but I must say - all in all - I think Sprout is going to be in at least one pair of very good hands.