It’s Finished!

Okay, Baby Katie — here’s your sweater.  Now, where are you?

We spent a few evenings last week taking walks around various indoor locations (the State Capitol building, Trolley Square) in order to get contractions going.  At Trolley Square, the kids ran into Pottery Barn Kids and then immediately began to beg . . . for things for Katie.

Jeffrey spent a good half hour in the baby girl bedding section, giving serious instructions about how we needed the beaded lamp, the rocking chair, and the matching butterfly bedding set.  (Had he forgotten that we already have the nursery pretty much ready?)  “Excuse me, madam,” he asked a sales clerk, and held up a pink bunny blanket.  “Is there a way we can buy this but put Baby Katie’s name on it first?”  Of course, the clerk replied, and then nattered on about online purchasing while I tried not to sigh.

Pottery Barn exists in a parallel sales universe that subsists on a healthy mix of the rich and gullible.  That bunny blanket retailed at $30.  Diaper bags were $168.  It’s cute but insane, right?

Eleanor, meanwhile, fell in love with the canopied little girl beds.  “When Katie turns five like me, we have to get her one of these, Mom.  Please please please?”  Oh, thank goodness I have five years to go.  A tepid “we’ll see” satisfied her completely.

In the meanwhile, I’m getting all kinds of tiny contractions, bizarre advice about how to induce labor (apparently rubbing my heels with my thumbs can do the trick) and the kids are obsessed with watching the documentary Babies.  Little Katie, where the heck are you?  It’s time!