Greetings From Paige's Closet! Wish You Were Here!

So when Alex and I left home Wednesday, the plan was to spend a couple of nights here at my parents' house, help Paige a little with her baby room plans, visit a bit with the in-laws, and head home Friday or, at the very latest, Saturday.

But Sunday night - 7:12 pm - and I'm still in Mississippi! Oh yes I am.

See, here's the thing about my cousin Paige, who is perhaps the sweetest, most tender-hearted person on the planet: if you gave her a clip for her hair in the 6th grade, and you took a paint pen and wrote her initials on it, and then you wrapped it up in a bag from the dollar store and then made her a card to go with it, she still has every. single. bit. of that gift. Card and all.

And I know for sure that she still has the hair clip, because I saw it in a drawer in her bathroom, along with the stickpin our great aunt Myrt gave her when she was eight.

Which was laying beside a birthday card her daddy gave her six years ago, with the birthday money still inside, because she can't bear to spend the money her daddy gives her because then it's like she loses the gift.

Are you catching on to the fact that she's very, very sentimental?

So while I came here to work on the baby's room, it sort of evolved into more of a whole house clean-out. And we're still not finished. But since I would like to see my, you know, husband, we're taking a break and then picking up again - hopefully with Sister's assistance - sometime in July.

And even though the work has been hard, and even though I never want to see a Sterlite 58 gallon storage container for the rest of my whole life ever, we have had a great time. There's just something about having some uninterrupted time with "kinfolk" that ensures that everything will funnier, that the stories will be even more entertaining than usual, and that at least one person will wet her pants as a result of all the hee-hawing.

An added plus is that I have stuff to write about for oh, the next month or so. I've said before that you can always count on family to provide enough material to pull you through a writing slump, and these last few days are no exception. In fact, I cannot wait to get home, sit down, and just write to my heart's content. Lots of thoughts running through this limited brain-o-mine right now.

And to answer the question a couple of you have asked: no, Paige doesn't know if she's having a boy or a girl. She doesn't want to know, and of course that is oh-so-very-Paige to be perfectly content with not knowing, to be perfectly happy with a little mystery on her hands.

Yesterday we were sorting through some clothes (I really did spend the entire afternoon in her closet), and she said, "I guess this should go in the baby's room." And she sort of patted her belly when she said it, and looked up at me, and said, "You know, that still sounds so weird to me: 'the BABY's room'."

I didn't say anything in return, because I thought that if I did I would probably start to cry, but all I could think was how instantly she will fall in love with that little baby whose existence is so difficult to imagine right now.

And how there is nothing - NOTHING - any sweeter than packing up old hair clips and birthday cards and stick pins to make way for baby blankets and crib sheets and diapers.

And how her life is about to change forever.

Not just because the sleep won't be as plentiful.

But because the love is about to multiply.

Again and again and again.