"I've Got Pictures."

It's been a couple of days now, but I'm still trying to deal with the news that my first daughter is...

Well, let me tell you how it started.

Saturday afternoon, I was comfortably asleep during my now de rigor afternoon nap, when my wife Maura wakes me and says, "Samantha is here, and she has some photos to show you."

"Huh? Wha..?" was my very intelligent reply.  I stumble to the back door.

Sammy is there, along with my other daughter Katie, and my ex-wife, of all people.

"I've got pictures." Samantha says.  She is holding a small pile of black-and-white... OH MY GOD THOSE ARE SONOGRAMS.

I'm frozen. I feel the floor drop out from under me. All I can do is stare at her over the top of my glasses.

"I knew he'd give you that look," the Ex says, laughing.

She's got a whole pile of sonograms, she explains, rather than the usual one or two, because, being a nurse in a hospital, she can shoot new ones whenever she gets bored.

It's a girl.  24 weeks along. And she's already kicking, Sammy says.

I'm going to be a real grandpa. I suddenly feel as old as a grandpa is supposed to feel, too.

I think back and think what most new grandpas must think when their daughters say they're going to have a baby -- wasn't that daughter born only a couple of years ago?  Why, it seems just like yesterday I was taking Lamaze class.  Or changing diapers.  Or celebrating a first birthday.  How could it be so long ago?

Daughter Number Two has already bought baby clothes.  Maura is clipping coupons for Pampers. Sunday, we hit three stores looking for the touchstone item that will bring it all home, at least for me.

When Samantha was in her first year, it seemed she lived in a bright footy jumper that we dubbed "the pink seal suit".  It just somehow felt that I urgently try and locate one for Natalie, for that is what (as of now) they'll name her.

Maura, God bless her, found the perfect jumper online and available for pickup at a local store.  So the torch (or pink seal suit) will be passed to a new generation.

Natalie will be coming in May. In the interim, should I refer to her as Prenatal-ie?

Maura, I suspect is getting tired of me singing "The Circle of Life" from Disney's Lion King. Perhaps I'll switch to "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler on the Roof.

Damn, I feel old.