The statistics of your life.

One-third of Americans have consumed ground beef in the last 24 hours.

-- Good Eats

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More black men voted for Ruben and Clay during the last American Idol final than voted for Bush and Gore in the 2000 election.

-- NPR's Morning Edition

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By the age of 2, children can understand 70% of the language they will understand for the rest of their life.

-- Something my grandmother was told by someone at Piper's Gymboree class. This is weak sourcing, I know. Color me Ann Coulter.

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More than 100 million acts of sexual intercourse occur every day.

-- World Health Organization

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BabyWatch Update: We had our 40-week appointment this morning -- and just a little progress. She's at two centimeters ... Baby's in a good, head-down position (occiput transverse) ... and we're still waiting. We scheduled the non-stress test for a week from today, which is significant because a) we don't really want a bad non-stress test, resulting in induction, and b) Piper came the night before her non-stress test was scheduled. Stay tuned....

The waiting is not the hardest part.

With each task we finish, we think to ourselves, "Okay, now the baby can come."

I thought this as I came from our garage this morning after having installed the base of The Expectant One's car seat.

We've thought it a dozen other times over the last two weeks: After we finished Piper's Christmas thank-you notes ... after I assembled the changing table ... after the basic painting of the nursery was finished (even if the sheep on the hills are only sheep torsos, sans legs and heads) .... when we found the tools for pain management during labor ... after the bags were packed for the "hostipal" (as Piper calls it).

And of course, none of this speeds up the process at all. "Zuzu" (her in utero name) is on her own timetable, and she's keeping mum to her Mum about said schedule.

Tonight, I'll do a grocery run, pick up some essentials we're low on in the house. I'll top off the gas tank. After dinner, I'll put some plastic over the windows in Zuzu's room to help with a touch of chill coming in (and to keep our gas bill, pushing $400 a month, a few dollars lower, we hope). And once I turn off the blow dryer on that project, I'll turn to Laura and say: "Okay, now the baby can come."

It's been a quiet coupla months in Lake Wobegone....

So we've quickly adjusted to many things ....

• The shock of being not just a homeowner, but a homeowner of a vintage (ca. 1925) home. In the first month-and-a-half, we had electrical and plumbing issues, at least partially related to the age of our home. "Well," our real estate agent said, "that's why I always say to put an extra 2% of your purchase price aside for situations just like this." Laura and I looked at each other and then simultaneously said to him: "You never told us that."
  
  
• The constant upstream battle against the "customer service" branches of just about every utility in the world. I have thought very seriously of starting a separate blog just for my remarkable travails with SBC, Comcast, AT&T Wireless, GE Medical Systems, ADT Security, Allstate Insurance, ComEd, NiCor, and I'm sure others that I'm way too exhausted/angry to think of at the moment. Then I realized that I'm barely keeping this blog alive, and the last thing I need is to start another blog I never write in.
  
  
• The reality that we're really going to be parents again. Yes, Laura is 22 weeks along. For those of you not into math, that would be a due date of around January 11. Every once in awhile, we look at each other at around 9 p.m., after we've put Piper down and we're trying to figure out if we can stay awake long enough to go water the yard in the dark or work on ridding the paper pile-up on our dining room table ... and we can't believe we're going to do this again. Early on, we asked Piper if she would rather have a baby brother or a baby sister. Piper was very clear every time we asked: "A baby sister." I thought it best that we find out the gender of the baby so that she would have plenty of time to adjust, lest she be getting a brother instead. But once again, Her Royal Highness will be getting just what she wants.
  
  
• The idea that summer is coming to a close ... and yet Chicago never really had it. It seems like all through July and August, we were setting records for new LOW temperatures. We had the occasional spate of warm days, but it was kind of a drag of a summer overall. I think Piper's three-day-a-week babysitter, Marta, has decided that this is the way Chicago is every year. She's moving back to Slovakia. And football's already here! I can't believe it. And speaking of sports ....
  
  
• The slow realization that the Cubs are not the team everyone said they would be. Hell, there are still baseball analysts that say the Cubs are the team to beat if they make it to the post-season. People, they've had 130+ games to prove that they're the team to beat, and they've been beat pretty well by just about everybody. What makes you think that they're going to make it past the first set of playoffs, if they get that far? I'm holding out for a miracle and a good, long winnning streak here in the waning days of the season, but the words "Wait 'til next year" are slowly coming into better and better focus.

I miss you all, and I'm looking forward to more writing here soon.