Of course I could.
I walked back home and kind of did my regular morning routine. For breakfast I took the two hard-boiled eggs I had decorated on Easter:
I cut each egg in half, took out their yolks, added mustard, mayonnaise, and paprika, mashed it all up and spooned it back into the yolk cavities, making what is known as "Deviled Eggs." I also had a bowl of cereal.
After not hearing from Carrie for a couple of hours I called only to be informed that she was 'bouts to call me. Shortly she swung by and picked me up and we went over to the Tarbets' house. Linnea seemed to be doing surprisingly well, and was up walking around like normal and everything. In fact, she planned to go for a walk to help move things along.
So we grabbed Lena and some of her sundries and stopped off at our house for just a bit before driving to Chuck E. Cheese's.
Lena had never been to Chuck E. Cheese's before. She loved it. With her mom being preggers and her dad having a cast on his ankle, neither one of them had really been able to run around and play with her very much for the past few weeks. So here she got to run around and be almost as crazy as she wanted. She really liked the jungle gym, and we found one whack-a-mole style game that shot out tickets like crazy. It really paid out. Lena really liked the cause-and-effect of bashing things and getting rewarded for it immediately.
Carrie & I set up a system wherein one of us would stay at a table while the other went and played with Lena. Lena would be given one token to play wherever she wanted. Once she used it up, she had to return to the table to get another one, and the person at the table only gave it to her if she said, "Please." So we created a situation where Lena was very well watched in that she had to return to base before she could have more fun, and also was shockingly polite for a three-year-old.
But, y'know, every time I go to Chuck E. Cheese's it seems a little worse than the time before. They don't have any video games (so to speak of). They don't have an animatronic stage show (they just have one crappy Chuck animatronic who "interacts" with a big bunch of video screens). And this time they didn't have the beloved ball pit. Next time they probably won't have the giant rotating Chuck statue or something else like that.
The pizza, despite being perhaps the greasiest pizza you can eat in a restaurant (unless there's somewhere you can have deep-fried pizza... I wonder if that would be any good...), had a subtle garlic flavor that neither Carrie nor I remembered. It was surprising, and actually made it rather tasty.
Anyway, we spent a good two hours there before we stopped off at the house just briefly. We then drove out to Point Defiance Park, where we walked by that big pond area (with a stop in the restrooms for Lena) and then up behind the zoo where there is a swingset and a jungle gym. Lena really likes to be pushed on the swings, and she really wanted me to push her "sister" on one of the other swings. Of course, when you push a swing that is empty, it tends to behave differently than a swing with a weight (like a child) in it. It tended to bounce and flip and spin more, so I would say that Lena's sister was "going crazy!"
On the way back to the car Lena wanted to play another game. "Run!" It wasn't so much a race as it was just running. I surprised myself by actually being able to run for quite a good distance without getting winded.
We stopped at the Asian Garden by the Pagoda for some hide-and-seek before running some more back through the flower gardens to the restroom where she went potty when we first got there. After another stop in those same restrooms we made it to the car.
We stopped off at a soda fountain shop near the Antique Sandwich Company. This is an actual soda fountain, too. It has like five or six stools at a bar, and you can get a whole bunch of soda fountain stuff. Lena got a vanilla ice cream cone (that she ended up eating in a bowl), Carrie got an espresso milkshake, and I got a root beer float.
This all used up a couple more hours, but when we talked to Linnea she was no further along; just periodic mild contractions. So we stopped off at our house and grabbed all of Lena's things and then took her home. Carrie & I came back to our house where I actually got a couple of hours of work done while Carrie relaxed.
Sometime after 6:00 the baby-having began in earnest. So at 8:00 I dropped Carrie off at the Tarbets' so they could go to the birthing center without worrying about Lena (who was completely zonked out at this point). I went to It's Greek to Me and picked up a falafel for Carrie and an Italian gyro for me, which I brought back to the house.
Lena woke up after us being there for a while, so we put on School of Rock and eventually Carrie took Lena upstairs and she fell asleep.
For maybe a half hour.
When she woke up she was wired. She was running around and jabbering and was generally acting like a three-year-old who was well-rested and going full steam ahead.
Around 10:45 we got the call that Eva Tarbet was born at 10:07 PM. Mother and daughter were both healthy and doing well.
After School of Rock it was almost midnight (we backed it up so that Carrie could watch the parts she missed while trying to get Lena to sleep). Lena wanted to watch 13 Going on 30 after that, and it was only about halfway through that movie that we finally basically forced her to lie down and relax, 'cause she was still going full speed. So it wasn't until nearly 2:00 in the morning that she actually went to bed.
Eventually Linnea & Jay came home with baby Eva, and Carrie & I got home and into bed at 3:00 in the morning.
