12 weeks and the beginning of the family war

Today we are at 12 weeks! That means only one more week left of the first trimester and only 1% chance of miscarriage from here on out. But that's not all that happened today. Today we began the war of the grandparents.

This is the first grandbaby on both sides of the family. That should be enough to explain the rest! The wife's parents told us yesterday that they wanted to take care of all of the furniture/etc. in the nursury up to a very generous limit (that will not only cover the furniture, but also the wall art, the rug, the hamper, the spare sheets, a mobile, maybe a nightlight...you name it. They are pretty excited to be grandparents.

Today, I had no patients, and "worked from home," where I spent most of my time looking up what we would need (a pretty exhaustive list) for the first year of our baby's life and pricing items that I liked. I also had a pretty lengthy conversation with my dad (an ex-colonel in the airforce)about real-estate and the growing baby. I let it slip (rather strategically) that the wife's parents were buying the nursery furniture, knowing that my dad can be somewhat competitive (hey, we need to save our money for maternity leave...so might as well milk the first grandbaby thing). A few hours after our conversation, he called me back and wanted to let me know that one of the things they want to take care of is the stroller/carseat system. Awesome. That was another one of the more major purchases. He asked me to let him know as soon as we know what one we want. This is pretty cute. You see, my dad, in his very military fashion, has difficulty expressing his feelings and his excitement about things...the only way you really know he is excited is when he pulls out his wallet. We knew my wife's parents would be excited, but my parents are often a mixed bag.

So the war has begun. I'm going to ride this out for a while. The other fun thing is that my sister is a pediatric nurse, mom is a neo-natal intensive care nurse, and mother in-law is a retired OBGYN nurse. They all love babies and are all going crazy. They also all get some pretty neat free stuff that they are stocking up on for baby huckleberry...a few less things we have to worry about!

It sounds so wrong...but I'm really loving this. It's pretty cute to see how excited they all are. Sometimes when I tell people we are pregnant and don't get the reaction I want, I know it's because it just isn't exciting to others as much as it is to us. But to our family, it's just as exciting. And that's a good feeling.