I am not a fan of vegetables for the most part. I like corn and peas, but I’m not supposed to eat them. I think mixed vegetables is one of the worst foods on this planet.

In 4th grade, my battleaxe of a teacher made me eat some of the cafeteria’s mixed vegetables. I argued that they smelled awful, truly bad. She insisted I eat them. I was in 4th grade and wasn’t rebelling at that time so I took a bite, swallowed, and then promptly puked them back up.

To this day I cannot stand that smell. Once, maybe 15-20 years later I was in a Chinese restaurant with friends. I hate Chinese food. It all smells bad to me. Instead of eating I drank 2 tall glasses of milk. At one point I needed to take a leak so I got up and headed across the restaurant. I walked by a booth with a guy and girl who were obviously on a date. I don’t know what they ordered, but when I got in front of their booth and got a whiff, it smelled exactly like Lytton Elementary School Mixed Vegetables. I promptly puked up two tall glasses worth of white milk on the red carpet.

The guy in the booth put his fork down. “Check please,” he said. “And some to-go boxes.”

So, again, not the biggest fan of vegetables. Which is why I am finding it amusing that unborn babies are measured in vegetables. We’re at week 29, which is buttnernut squash. Just 5 weeks ago little Six was the size of an ear of corn. But they didn’t say if it was a little bitch-sized corn they grow elsewhere, or an ear of corn large enough to choke an elephant like we grow in Iowa.

Week 30 is cabbage. But not just any cabbage, a large cabbage.

And I’m fucking terrified of week 32 because then the boy is going to be the size of a large jicama and I don’t know what that is.

Week 35 is a honeydew melon. I hate honeydew melon. I’d rather eat Styrofoam dipped in turpentine.

Week 36? Romaine Lettuce. If you’ve been around me at all, you know of my never ending, soul-sucking hatred for all things lettuce.

Look, I know I’m the guy here and my wife is the one doing all the hard work of growing a life. I also know we found out 24 weeks in and we missed a lot of anticipation.

I can also tell you now that I do not care. I know I should be more patient, but I’m not.

I just want these final few weeks to fly by because I want him here. Screw the vegetables, I want to hold a little Six-sized baby. I want to fight off insanity as sleep becomes a thing of the past. The screaming, the crying, the diaper changes, the 3AM feedings, the smiling, the laughing, I want it all. And I want it now. I’m like a 41 year old Veruca Salt. (Props if you get the reference.)

And yet…I have to wait. Our lives have changed so drastically from what we knew 6 weeks ago. I’m not stressed, I’m anxious. Patience and I were never the best of friends, but this time I can’t do anything to speed things up. If Patience was a living entity, right now he’d be hunched over, cackling in my ear about the interminable wait.

But Nature will not be trifled with. We gotta get as close to 40 weeks as we can, for Six’s sake. Everything thing we do is fixated on that goal. And it’s good to have a goal, no matter how insane it is currently driving me.

So I sit.

And I wait.