Newly Arrived for the Future New Arrival

Our child's cot arrived today. (Five minutes after 8 AM! Blimey! The Royal Mail sure gets a right early start round here!) In America we'd call this thing a crib, but here in England a crib is a much smaller affair, usually on rockers (what we'd call a cradle in America). One of the places where American English and British English seem to differ a lot is the phenomena and paraphernalia associated with babies. So, being both first-time parents and American expatriates, we're having to catch up and learn two sets of lingo. Mostly we're managing, though there are still things I don't have names for in either language. Like that rubber sucking thing that is useful for removing grapes from up an infant's nose.

Sunshine's been doing a lot of the work. She's good about reading up on things. Her first instinct when facing a new challenge is to try and find a book about it. She grew up as a big library girl. She's gotten better about not bringing home giant backpacks full of books though. At the very least it's must be better for her spine.

Anyway, the arrival of the cot and other baby stuff is triggering another shuffling of the furniture, both literally and metaphorically. Life in our flat is beginning to resemble a 15 puzzle, especially when we're both at home and the laundry rack is out, etc.

As the impending arrival of the boychild gets closer, and more tangible effects materialize, it's definitely beginning to seem a lot more real. This, in turn, is precipitating the 15 puzzle effect in my mind as well. I find myself moving chunks around and reshuffling my thoughts to make room for something new, and presumably quite large as far as my internal brain furniture goes. This is probably a good thing. I think I'm a bit of a mind slob. It seems rather messy and cluttered and disorganized in there. At best sort of a college bachelor pad, but maybe even as bad as a garage or storage shed. Perhaps a nest. A big nest. Like Big Bird's nest. Yes, that's it, I have a Big Bird brain!

Perhaps I should think these metaphors through before committing to them...