Today, Dan had to go to work for about six hours. I arranged a play-date for Shef over here for the first two, which was great for all of us.

The other four hours? I'm not going to lie: they were long.

People keep asking how Shef us adjusting to having a brother. We've been saying that he seems okay, but that he's been acting kind of weird. Here are some snippets from this afternoon's conversation on the way home from school:

Shef: I'm going to do naked biking like that guy.

Me: That guy is not naked.

Shef: Yes he is!

Me: He's wearing shorts.

Shef: That's naked!

Me: No, actually no clothes is naked.

Shef: OH! I wanna do THAT! I'm going to naked bike!

Me: I think that would be very uncomfortable.

Dan: There would probably be some chafing.

Shef: I'm going to do it when I'm all alone and not in your house anymore.

Dan: Yeah. Do it when one of your friends can post bail for you.

And then a couple of minutes later -

Shef: Mom, you can't do summer stuff.

Me: Why not?

Shef: Because you're a woman and womans can't do summer stuff.

Dan: Shef, womans can do anything that men can do.

Shef, laughing maniacally: NO GIRLS ALLOWED in my summer stuff!

He's outside right now doing "summer stuff," which is running through a sprinkler. I think he's having a good time. And there aren't any girls out there.

It's hard for me to see my incision what with the round, mushy belly I still have; but Dan said something looked odd about it this afternoon while I was getting dressed after a shower. I called the doctor, and she suggested I come and see her and have it checked out.

After she poked around a little with some swabs and removed the "steri strips," which in her estimation, had only made the situation worse, she asked me to sit up a little and take a look at what we were dealing with.

"Oh, GROSS," I said, sinking back down on the table after looking at it for a second or two. "That is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen."

"I've seen worse," she said, smiling.

"Yes, but you're a DOCTOR," I blurted. She agreed this was the case, and then she stepped out for a moment to get some supplies.

"Dan," I said when she was gone, "isn't that the most disgusting thing you've ever seen in your life?"

"No," he said. I could tell he was trying to make me feel better.

"What have you seen that's more disgusting?" I demanded.

"Your face," he countered.

This made me laugh really hard, which hurts my incision. When she got back, the doctor probed around in there some more, attempting to see if in fact, my skin is coming apart. This obviously hurt my incision, as well.

When I got home, I had to take a nap to rest from all the hurting. And while I was drifting off, I thought about how much I hadn't wanted this stupid surgery in the first place.

The new kid is incredibly familiar-looking. When we caught a glimpse right after he was born during surgery, Dan said, "Great! We won't even need to take baby photos!" The truth is, we could easily interchange photos of Shef and Mac during these first few days, and few people would notice. Here Mac is on his second day, trying to keep his eyes open:



He seems to be sleepier than Shef was at this stage, he has more hair on his head, and he appears to have a dimple in his right cheek.

The big brother is adjusting all right. I think he thought Mac would be a little more exciting than he is. Right now, the ten or twelve dirty diapers a day are the highlight, and I think we can all agree, that's not really as awesome as t-ball or Kung Fu Panda.

[Guest-posted by Dan]

Thanks to the miracles of both childbirth and wireless internet, KC, Shef and I are pleased to introduce Mac, who joined our family at 12:50 this afternoon.

So far, he seems pretty nice. He weighs in at 9 lbs. 13 oz. and is 22.5 inches tall.

KC and Mac are both doing well, and we expect to be home sometime this weekend. More pics to follow, but here's what he looks like at ~5 hours old doing the two things he does best; being asleep and awake.

Asleep:

And, awake:

For good measure, and apropos of nothing, here's a picture of Shef playing t-ball:

Yesterday’s doctor’s appointment confirmed that the kid is just completely happy hanging out right where he is. Sadly, he can’t stay there forever.

“There has to be an end point,” my doctor told us, as I finagled for more time in various hypothetical situations.

I told Dan the other night that I would be so happy to go into labor that I would welcome the onset of each contraction with unconditional joy. We’ll see if that’s the case when I go to the hospital tonight, where I agreed to have my water broken.

This is basically the last resort for someone with a prior uterine surgery who needs to get induced. Regardless of whether or not it works, the baby should be born tomorrow, June 11th. I’ll let you know.

I just finished Jhumpa Lahiri’s new book, Unaccustomed Earth. I enjoyed it heartily. To tell the truth, I didn’t think I would finish the book before the baby came, but in the end, that’s the way it worked out.

This has been a hard wait at times, but I am trying to be patient. I am reminding myself I have been here before. Some people just cook their babies a little longer, and apparently, I am one of those people.

This is a weird little photo of Shef that his teachers took at school to attach to his "Artist's Bio," in which he mentions nothing about enjoying art. Because he doesn't.

Anyway, it's not that flattering of a photo, and it doesn't even totally look like him... but there's something about it I just like.

I’m not feeling very cranky today, so that’s a plus. I am disappointed that the two new discs of Season Two of Friday Night Lights I requested from Blockbuster did not arrive in the mail this afternoon, but that is beyond my control and not really worth a lot of energy. I had an interesting acu-session with Allison, Ramon’s wife. She hooked me up to some little electrodes that stimulated a couple of needles intermittently. I am feeling weird, so I think it did something; but I’m not sure what.

Now, I think we’ll watch our favorite movie, Love Actually. Last night we watched Dan’s fantasy girlfriend, Padma Lakshmi, preside over Part I of the finale of Top Chef. Even I had to admit that Padma looked pretty good. Not really at all like a lizard. I think they’ve changed her make-up for the better, and I liked her dress.

Depending on which calendar you use, I’m either five or three days overdue.

I alternate between feeling totally zen-like about this situation and totally despondent. The swings between these extremes happen mostly without warning; although they sometimes correspond to the number of inquiries I’ve received in a day. Like one-word emails that just say, “Baby?” Or voicemail messages that begin, “I certainly hope you’re holding that baby by now!”

Today, I’m planning on spending some time reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s new book while lying in my bed. I’m tired and fat, and lying down seems like kind of a good idea. I probably won’t go into labor, but I’ll let you know. I promise I’ll let you know.

Every time we have a long weekend, it’s a little harder for Shef to go back to school the next week. This is the same for me when I’m teaching. It’s like that little extra taste of home makes the daily grind all the more bitter. Since Shef was sick on Friday, he was especially hesitant to join his class yesterday. Thank God he had show-and-tell. In fact, he was in the middle of it when I came to pick him up. “Just a second, Mom,” he said from where he was standing at the head of the group-time mat, holding his phony mustache-nose-and-glasses disguise. “I’ve just taken my first question.”

When I finally got him into the car and asked how the day was, he told me he’d picked some gunk out of his ear.

“You did what?” I asked.

“There was some stuff in my ear, and I picked it out.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Just some gunk,” he explained. “I’ve never picked anything out of my ear before.” This is as opposed to his nose, which is so frequently mined that he has a scab on the outside of his left nostril.

“Hmmm,” I said. This seemed an appropriate response to me, as we were most likely talking about a finger-full of ear wax. But when I looked in the rear-view mirror, there were tears forming in his little eyes. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Oh, I thought you would be really impressed about it,” he said, dejected. I think the ear wax might have been the high point of the day.

Most of this pregnancy been pretty satisfactory in the appearance department: my face hasn’t been as swollen, my ring came off relatively late, and I have a more pronounced belly and less of a pronounced everything-else.

However, this weekend, despite still being able to wear my size medium maternity pants (not a possibility past 30 weeks with Shef), I’ve officially entered the “there’s no way to make this look good” phase.

“I’m a big fat cow,” I told Dan last night, after I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a window while we watched our third episode of Friday Night Lights.

“No, you’re a very pretty cow,” he said sweetly.

And then we both tried to talk the new kid into making an appearance. I think he’s ready. Today would be as good a day as any.