Love and birthdays

The love of my life is one day older today than she was yesterday, just like everyone else in this big crazy world, but she also happens to be commemorating exactly 39 years of refining the pure, undiluted awesome she was born with. We will celebrate this weekend with copious amounts of pie, both pizza and pastry varieties, because one of the extremely few-and-far-between instances of disagreement between us comes down to the great Pie versus Cake debate. But of course, for her birthday, I will happily let her have her way.

I am torn between my natural and constant desire to expound at length on the virtues of my wife especially on her big day, and the fact that I am unbearably tense and distracted at the moment because I got a text last night from Little Bro saying he and his wife were at the hospital, and she was going to be induced into labor with the expectation that the baby, their first child and my and my wife's first niece, would be born "some time" today. I have not yet gotten an update so I am basically climbing the walls with nervous anticipation.

One of the most penetrating death-laser glares I ever received from my wife was when I was recounting to some friends the story of the bambino's delivery, although really it was the story of how we settled on his name at long last the very day he arrived, and so in narrating everything from sunup to sundown that day I elided over the pains of birth for my wife with a handwaving "and then labor was, y'know, fine ..." I deserved the death-laser, I admit! But I bring up that random anecdote-of-telling-an-anecdote mostly to remind myself that most labors, however long and arduous, are in fact fine in the end. We always ask how mother and baby are doing immediately after, but there's good statistical reasoning behind assuming that it will be a pro forma question and answer. I need reminding of that at the moment. It was hard, all three times my wife and I went to the maternity ward, to banish worry about all the unlikely but frightening possible scenarios. It's proving almost equally as hard when it's my Little Bro navigating the same territory.

So, too preoccupied to blog much more today! Updates to follow, though, I'm sure.

UPDATE #1 - I just saw that my sister-in-law posted a happy birthday message on my wife's Facebook wall about an hour ago (it's 1:40 p.m. EDT) and included a happy-faced addendum about "working on" having niece and aunt share a birthday. On the one hand, good to know nothing went awry overnight. On the other hand, if my sister-in-law is still breezily social-media'ing, that baby is probably not coming any time soon.

UPDATE #2 - My wife and niece weren't meant to share a birthday after all, it seems. The wee one arrived at 3:30 a.m. this morning (Saturday). Pro forma or not, I'm happy to report mom and newborn are doing well.