Lesson #9: You can’t ever be too ready for a stork

Well, the little guy with the big head arrives in 9 weeks!  However, I’m banking on the chance that the stork was thrown a good 50-100 miles off its course tonight.  The grill has been blown across the deck, the bench flew off the deck into the bushes, it sounds currently like there is a 747 suspended outside our house, and the wind is blowing 60 mph out there.  So maybe we’ll get a few extra days to prepare for the stork’s arrival.  I also installed some new chimney flue covers so those should delay the stork’s delivery by a 1/2 day or so.  But, I think we’ll be ready by then. 

Last week we got the car seat in the mail.  Jessie read that 80% of car seats are not installed correctly.  Therefore, we scheduled an appointment with the car seat inspector last night to make sure it was installed correctly.  I took the car seat, put it in the car with the two clips, tightened it down so it didn’t budge, leveled the little bubble between the two lines, and opted for the slightly more reclined position that still kept the level bubble between the lines (thinking that an infant would be a little safer and more comfortable in the more reclined position), and went inside to tell Jessie that we didn’t need to go to the inspection.  But the safety of our baby was at risk if we didn’t I was told, so we did. 

We got to the car seat inspection, the guy took some information, asked if we had read the manual, etc.  Then he opened the car, looked at the carseat installation and said it looked almost perfect.  He un-hooked it, changed the leveling angle and re-installed it.  “Now it looks perfect!” he said.  He then called over the “official” inspector who signs off on every one.  She said, “Lief, it looks great, but I would drop the angle just a little more into the reclined position.  There will be room, and the level bubble will still be between the marks.  It is a little safer and more comfortable for an infant in that position.”   He un-hooked the car seat, dropped the angle back to where I had it, and asked her to come sign off on the change.  She returned to the car and said, “Now that’s perfect.”  If the stork arrives 1 hour before we are completely ready for it, I’m blaming it on the 1 hour car seat inspection.

 

So we will move on to the next project  on the “Pre-Stork Arrival Checklist.”  That is a multi-task project including all items under the sub-heading “Baby’s room.”  So we got some paint tonight and will hopefully check one more thing off the list this week.  If anyone else has an idea for delaying the stork, let me know.  For now we are on schedule, but if the wind changes to a tailwind, we may need your ideas.