Except for Several Very Satisfying Work-Related Things

This title comes from Tina Fey's Bossypants, in which she calls breastfeeding "the most gratifying thing I've ever done," with the footnote, "Except for several very satisfying work-related things."

Baby arrived. She is pretty neat.

She was 10 days late. In lieu of a birth story, let me instead tell you that after the baby was out and we were attempting to do that coo-and-cuddle routine with her, the obstetrician pronounced with pleasure that this was a "very straightforward delivery." A few moments later, I asked the nurses, "Who in the hell are these women who keep coming back to do this over and over?"

In other words: it appears that I had it relatively easy. Relatively easy says, "DAMN. You do not want it hard. One-and-done, baby!"

"Fortunately," I now say with quotes for ironic emphasis, you can read other posts on this blog to see that the point is moot. Score.

Perhaps the worst ordeal of my pregnancy was how challenging it was to decorate the nursery. Listen, I get that the nursery is just a room and now that the baby's about a month old she still can't see much and really doesn't care as long as somebody feeds her within 12 seconds of when she first moves her fist within a mile of her mouth. And I get that it's all kinds of superficial.

The nursery, however, was the thing at which I threw all my insecurities and guilt and residual aggravations over how difficult it was to bring Squirt (no, not her real name, and yes, I think I did have to say that explicitly) into existence. The nursery was the forge in which we used our marriage to pound out a new identity for our family. It was the garden in which we paused to heal our remaining hurts before Squirt arrived. It was the metaphor to end all metaphors.

It also didn't work. Totally still working through those issues. Step at a time, people.

But, we got a killer nursery. When it was finished, we said to each other, "It's almost a shame to put a baby in here."

For instance, one morning I was changing Squirt's diaper. There was a lot of poo. Okay, sure. Then as I was wiping her off, she peed everywhere. Alrighty. Then, she sneezed, and poo flew out her butt, across the changing table, and onto the side of the really nice dresser that we negotiated over.*

Ick aside… that's kind of awesome.

Here are some pictures I grabbed not long before Squirt arrived, plus a few from our photographer friend who dropped by to take some newborn shots a couple weeks later in exchange for a bottle of whiskey. You'll know the difference because the good pictures are hers.

A closer shot of the pinwheels and fabric circles. Check out the tutorial from Martha Stewart for the pinwheels: very easy. We tacked them into the wall rather than onto a stick.

Print from Mint Peony Designs.

A Faribault blanket that Mr. MGY discovered on a recent work trip to Minneapolis.

Mr. MGY also painted the walls. He is remarkably meticulous as a painter. I'll try to look up the color and post it in the comments at some point, but I'm running out of time before Baby Bomb goes off.

Oh, and the baby. Okay. One picture, but just one:

"Nom, nom, nom."

* He got the dresser, and I got the curtains with the red pom-pom fringe instead of the pink fringe. (He later cleaned some pee off the dresser, and insisted that this was worse than poo because you can't see where all the pee has gone.)