From the bleachers:

So how does it feel, you may ask, this impending fatherhood of mine? My response: So far, it really doesn't. I think fatherhood during the first pregnancy is a strange thing. My body isn't changing, Christy's body hasn't noticeably changed yet, and life goes on as normal. (Except our alcohol bill has decreased slightly, and will not have the 5 day surge that it has had during the previous four months.)

Really, so far my involvement with this child has really only been five to ten minutes, and then BAM, for the next 40 weeks I am a spectator. (Hence the title of this first blog entry.) And yet s/he is there, lurking. Spike, that little ball of cells. Well, actually a small kidney-bean sized rascal with a spinal ridge, limb buds, eyespots and a tail, and possibly a beating heart by this point. Life. 46 chromosomes (or so we hope.) Additional sentence fragment. I can't really get my brain around it.

Actually there has been one large change: books. When an impending child is discovered, one must acquire books. Quite a ridiculous amount of books, more than can possibly be read in the 8 months or so left. It makes me wonder how people managed to have and raise normal, healthy children in the times before Mr. Gutenberg invented his movable type printing press. (Contrary to popular belief, the first book printed was not the Bible, but "What to Expect when You're Expecting," I am certain of it.) For those of you youngsters reading, 1st: Get off of the computer and do your homework like your parents asked! 2nd, if you are over the age of 8, you are behind in your "soon-to-be-parent" reading list, so get on it! It will take you approximately 34.3 years for you to get through it, and then, at 42.3 years of age, you will be past your most fertile years and can only sit in your empty house and reflect on the bitter irony of having all that parental (and prenatal) knowledge and yet never having met anyone, gotten married and had kids because you were too busy reading books about having kids.

I just noticed that "parental" and "prenatal" contain the same letters. I wonder if after Spike is born, we start taking parental vitamins?

That's the view from the bleachers for now...