I think Shane was scared she’d hurt her, but it was really cute watching her take Kallie from Alice and hold her. It made me wish I had my camera. Shane had what seemed to be a tiny conversation with the baby, and then carefully handed her back to Alice and said she was going to wait outside. It made me laugh since she’d only been in the room for about three minutes, tops. Not that it mattered; Alice and I weren’t allowed in for very long ourselves. Which was just fine with us. We loved seeing the baby, but there was a lot to do at home to get ready.

Once the nursery was finished, we started to work on buying other baby stuff. It seemed like we needed a million different things. We went on shopping sprees for bottles, baby clothes, a bouncy chair thing, a monitor, a playpen, a baby swing, a plastic thing to give her a bath in, and more baby toys than you could shake a stick at. It was actually pretty fun, all things considered.

Helena came over and helped us try to babyproof a little bit. She brought us some tiny plastic things to put into the unused outlets, and it took us a little while to get them put in all over the house. When we were done, though, it did feel much safer. I suppose it was a little silly to be doing all of that before Kallie was even cleared to come home with us, but I felt better doing it.

The baby was still so tiny that she could fit easily in Alice’s hand, and she wouldn’t be mobile for a good while, but we still wanted to put padding on things that had sharp corners. That took a little more work than we’d thought, but after an afternoon of trying to nail padding into things, we decided to just use Velcro. “Why the hell didn’t we think of this before?” Alice asked me when it turned out to be a lot easier than the other way.

The entire time we were getting ready, the others were planning a big party for us. We were completely oblivious to this, seeing as we were so busy getting the house ready and spending a small fortune on baby stuff. But the night before the interview, Jenny happened to let it slip while she, Shane, and Helena were over having dinner with us. She didn’t really say much, just that we had to call her when the interview was over so they’d know it was all right to come over. Alice and I shot each other a confused look at this, and Shane and Helena looked slightly panicked. It made me laugh, when it finally dawned on me what she could mean.