We're ready and I think Lucas is too...

Our bags are packed, the baby's room is finished, and all of our Lucas care arrangements are made, so I feel at peace and ready to have the baby. I was really struggling with how Lucas would handle us being away for a day when the baby is born. We've been away from him before for a day, but we have never left in the middle of the night and had him wake up to someone else. I reached out to several friends and have been overwhelmed by how receptive everyone has been! Everyone that possibly can has said that they'll make themselves available at any time during the day and are happy to have Lucas spend the night with them. I even have three people lined up to come to our house so that Lucas can stay in his routine, sleep in his own bed, etc. So we are ready... we've done all of the prep work that we can. Now for Lucas...

It's amazing to me at the timing, but he is becoming more and more independent every day. For the first two years of his life I would hesitate to even leave the house while he was sleeping because if he woke up then I knew he'd only want me. It wasn't worth it for us to hire a sitter because we'd worry about how he was doing the entire time. Anyway, we've seen a tremendous change in the past few months and even more in the past few weeks. He LOVES our adult friends and usually greets them with a "hi!!!!!" or a hug. If a strange knocks on the door (a lot of political stuff lately), he'll run and get a toy to show them or show him his shirt, boo-boo, etc. When we did leave him with a sitter about a month ago he had a blast and when our neighbor came over for instructions on how to care for him he was grabbing her hand saying, "Mis chelle, come on. thomas teen table. come on. 2 min please." as I was trying to talk to her. So that's how he is with friends and strangers, which is cool, but what's even cooler is how he is with Jeff now. I'm starting to think he's more of a dada's boy than a mama's boy at this point. He loves playing with Jeff and gets upset if Jeff leaves the room while they are playing... "dada! come back and pay!"

I know he'll be a great big brother. He's so compassionate. We're ready!