The door bell rang.
"That's odd," said Ann.
"Can you see who it is out the window?" I inquired.
"No, but they must have the wrong house," she replied, "they have a big bunch of balloons and I think one of them says something about a baby."
"Well, we'd better answer it and see if we can't get them to the right address."
Ann headed toward the door, when whoever was at door tried the door knob. "What are they doing?" said the old curmudgeon on the couch (that'd be me). "It must be the neighbor kids from down the street; only they'd try to just walk right in."
As I heard the door unlock, I also heard "What? What are you doing here?" from my bride. Then I heard two voices from outside the door.
"We're were just in the neighborhood and thought we'd bring you a card just a few days late," said a seemingly familiar sounding voice. I got off the couch and came around to the top of the stairs looking down at the landing of our split-level home. Much to my great surprise, there stood our daughter and son-in-law, who live over ninety minutes away. It was a Thursday evening, a school night (our daughter's a teacher) and it was unannounced.
"We just wanted to give you this belated Grandparent's Day card," announced Rebecca. After that, chaos erupted for several minutes as the reality of that announcement sank in: she was pregnant and we were going to be grandparents for the first time ever!!!
As one of our favorite authors/friends/church members would say: Squee!!
Now, after waiting for nearly three weeks, our daughter was so excited to report they'd heard the heartbeat for the first time yesterday (nearly 185 swishy-beats per minutes––if you've never heard the sound of a 10-week-old baby's heart, well, it's just a bit hard to describe other than swishy). They also had an ultrasound and got to see a teeny-tiny, little 1" long shape, to which Rebecca announced, "I think I could see a head and feet."
Now, one of the big questions around the Sorensen household is this: what will we be called? I suggested Gramps and Grannie Annie, but that hasn't been met with much aplomb. We'll get back to you on that.
