Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Dear Rigby,
Though we have known about your arrival since May, with only three months remaining, I find myself completely unprepared. The nursery needs painting, your crib remains piecemeal in its box, I don’t know how to hold your head without it slipping off – I fear we’re screwed.

After our doctor’s appointment this week, we were told the next visit would be three weeks out instead of our customary month long intervals. Soon we’ll be checking-in every two weeks, then every week, and before I know it, you’ll be screaming at me that Mommy doesn’t make peanut butter and jelly that way while I try and fathom how a “few” afternoon errands can possibly take the woman so long.

As such, I have begun a frantic dash of preparation. Our washer and dryer were the first casualties; hammering back and forth against the floor, they spew out our delicates tattered and laced with an odd odor. Your precious puppy - festooned oneseezes will not suffer this abuse, nor will your adorable sweater vest with matching oxford shirt know such a smell. The new machines arrive in a week.

I have also decided you cannot enter a world that allows our kitchen floor to exist. Checkered black and white ceramic tile, the floor is a deranged marriage of a 1950’s diner and a County Clerk’s office. We are shopping our options now and should have some faux-marble porcelain tile awaiting you.

You see, Rigby, as the gravity of your existence remains allusive in my immature mind, I am grasping at the elements I can control. A nursery coated in Nevada Sky or Enchanting blue? The Graco Milan patterned stroller or the Perego Pliko P3 in Mod Blu? The questions abound.

With all this talk of machinery and hardware, I feel there is something you should know about your father. I am not very handy. While I am happy to hold the ladder as your mother changes a light bulb or point out the patch of weeds Pedro the yardman missed, I don’t own anything flannel and blister easily. A few nights ago when the clerk at Home Depot kept insisting I could handle the demolition of our kitchen floor myself, I peered at my cranberry button-down shirt and walnut hued loafers and wondered what about it all said “do-it-yourself.”

I just want you to know this upfront, so when we are shopping for your sixth birthday and your Teenage Ninja Pokemon Rangers life-size castle reads “some assembly required” you’ll know to love a book just as much.

That’s all for now my friend.
- Dad