Hi, little one. This past week was a busy one, so this note is late, but I think you understand. Wednesday morning we met with a very friendly doula at a Starbucks up in White Marsh. A doula is sort of like a coach for both your mother and I. She’s had several children herself, and she’s helped a bunch of other mothers with their deliveries, so she knows what to do during the different stages of labor. I don’t know about your mother, but I got a great feeling from this woman almost immediately after shaking her hand. We chatted for an hour and a half, and by the end of the meeting we were both sold. Which means that, barring a scheduling catastrophe or freak September blizzard, she will be one of the first people you meet on the day of the Big Move. She is very familiar with the hospital we’ll be at and she gave the OBs in your mother’s practice glowing praise, something that very nearly made your mother cry with relief. Also, the combined batting average of the doula and our doctors means the chances are exceptionally good you will be coming out the front door and not through the window.

All that noise you heard on Friday? That would have been the Catonsville parade, right out in front of our house. All the swearing you heard the previous Monday? That was your father’s reaction to the people who staked out their spot on our lawn with a tarp and five rusty paint cans. Other houses get neat rows of plastic furniture, and we get the crap from the back of somebody’s garage. I’m over it now, though.

Thinking about it for a little while, I smile when I think that you will spend your first couple of years in a house where you will expect this yearly phenomena just like you will expect a cake for your birthday. I wonder if we’ll move out in time for us to have to explain to you no, not everyone gets a parade in their front yard, and daddy’s yelling at that man because he’s trying to kill our grass.

Every year we spend the week before the parade getting ready, and it never seems like we actually are. This year we had some friends come early and help us with some critical tasks which made things run a lot smoother. The parade itself was great. We got the usual state senators, representatives, judges, sheriffs and pageant winners, but no Governor. We did, however, get the Wienermobile! There was a lot of Jeebus this year, too—the tambourine people were back, and the puppets, but the Krishnas didn’t make an appearance. The Boumis came out in full force, and there were a whole dealership’s worth of Corvettes, along with a gaggle of pretty older cars. And some ugly ones too.

It rained off and on all day, so I would have bet your college fund there would be no fireworks that evening, but they decided to shoot them off anyway. Not that we were in any condition to walk down to see them; instead, we sat our asses on the couch and slowly fell asleep.

Saturday we were all still wiped out, so we did what most other Americans do on holiday weekends: we shopped for furniture and antiques at our favorite haunts, then took in Wall-E at a nice climate controlled movie theater. You will surely like Wall-E when you’re old enough to watch it; I’d say it’s one of the best Pixar movies in a long while (Toy Story and The Incredibles being my favorites). But we’ll get to that in a few years—no hurry. Mommy and Daddy can’t afford all those DVDs right now anyway.