Our lives continue. We march onward towards Six’s arrival.

I can’t tell you how happy I am. Or how fucking bizarre this whole situation is.

I gave up on having kids more years ago than I care to count. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I stopped letting myself even think about having hope for a kid. And yet, here we are. And while I believe it, it still doesn’t seem real. Our whole world shifted and yet a very real part of me still saw it slightly out of phase, a half step out of reality, where things are distorted, as if I’m watching it happen to another version of me.

I continue to do the things we need to do. Reorganize the house? Check. Start the research on baby gear? Check. Look for a futon for the guest room? Check. Look for a smaller desk for the office? Check. Five hundred other things? Check, check, check. Down the list I go, knowing without a doubt these are the things I need to do.

But still… not entirely real for me. Even the ultrasounds, the printed pictures, all the medical professionals who are very sure my wife is pregnant, all that, none of it could pierce the thin sheathing between these two realities.

It gets close at times. Occasionally there are little stabs that threaten to bring these realities together. At the ultrasounds when I can see the little guy, his shape, his bones, or the partial pics of his face we can get, it gets real for the time I’m there. But then the ultrasound tools get put away, we wrap up the appointment, and by the time I’m throwing a leg over my Harley, that little gap, that little hole between real and not real seals itself up tight. I figured it was just a matter of time until things came over into the really real world, but I didn’t know when.

It happened last night.

I was up, heading into the kitchen when the wife called me over and put my hand on her belly. Six was being active and she wanted me to see if i could feel a kick before he decided to take a nap. I stood there for a bit and nothing happened. I stood a bit more and still nothing happened. I was about to give it up and head back to the kitchen, when I felt it.

A tiny little kick that I felt at the end of my thumb. I stood up straight right quick, hell, I damn near jumped. I’m told the expression on my face was something to behold.

But that’s normal. Regardless of the person or the situation, when you’re living between two realities and they come come together, when they merge, as soon as you become aware of it, you get gobsmacked for a moment, sometimes longer. It was just a second or two for me, but I had been building towards this for a few weeks now. One second I was living my life and the next second everything changed. Again.

I’m good with that.