An alien - presumably a disgusting one - lives inside my wife

So Val is fifty percent pregnant (week 19). I, occasionally, wistfully remember how recently I awoke to barfing each morning. Those were the days folks. When men were men, and women were barfing constantly. But honestly people, the second trimester is serious logz: the wife gets fatter and a wee bit saner, but things remain relatively plateaued.

Now we wait for The Happening or The Quickening or The Somethinging.

Quantitative proof

It has always been a possibility that this whole “pregnancy” has been an elaborate ruse put on by Val to cover up her burgeoning beer belly. There was no real proof that something — something wondeful/disgusting (wonderfully disgusting?) — was growing inside of her loins. That is … UNTIL NOW.

On Sunday I felt HW punch Valerie in the guts. Most likely Val had said something which HW and I both disagreed with and HW decided to voice his/her displeasure with violence. I blame video games. But it was really cool and bizarre.

Also, HW can now hear — opposed to his/her’s namesake (IRONY!). So we’ve loaded some tunes onto the ol’ iPod shuffle and blast them nightly into the ol’ uterus. The list of approved music follows:

• The Beatles
• Otis Redding
• Johnny Cash

Screw Mozart.

Materialism

We are also starting to get our first influx of child related things. The great part is we haven’t spent a dime. Things have miraculously apparated into our house with alarming frequency. For small things — and luckily most baby things are necessarily small — this is fine. We tuck them in a draw and forget about them.

I am wary, however, of all the stuff you “need” to have a kid. Chairs, bouncy things, rocky things, soft things, terrible plastic things that make noises. People: I am trying to de-clutter here. I am also, hopefully, trying to raise a kid who doesn’t use stuff as a measure of self-worth.

We’ll see how far I’ll get in this my current quest.