While counting down to actually having baby rampy, mr rampy and I tried to examine our daily behavior and modify it as needed to become the very best parents we could. For example, one night mr rampy cooked filet mignon with strings wrapped around each piece of meat, and when he'd eaten his fill, he put his plate with the remains--string and all--on the floor for the cats. And naturally the cats wolfed it down--string and all. All crazy preggers hormonal, I gave him a big lecture about how it's bad enough the cats had just eaten string (!), but he definitely couldn't leave odds and ends like that out in reach for baby to eat.

Of course, a few weeks later I took down our central pedestal dining room table by weighing the left side down with a hugely heavy pile of books that I planned to shift to the right as I finished with them. Damn you, laws of physics. The whole top just sheared off the pedestal and tilted onto my lap (luckily just missing my pregnant belly, though bringing a sharp-edged rain of library books down about my legs). So it was a tragedy that I broke the table, but it would have been even worse had the object that broke the table's back been, say, a child carrier with our baby in it. Not that you're supposed to put those on tables, but clearly mr rampy and I aren't the clearest-thinking individuals at all times.

So we both swore to redouble our efforts to think through the future effects of our actions. And we were doing really well until we brought baby home and were test-driving her on her playmat for the first time, and mr rampy initially put her down with her face firmly planted in the tummy-time pillow. Intuitive sometimes he ain't.