The meaning, according to dictionary.com: a coming into place, view, or being; arrival.

I can’t get over it, this gift that I am just now seeing–maybe because it’s sitting atop a pile of so many other gifts that only become visible when I’m wearing my eyes of gratitude: the fact that this baby boy is set to arrive during my favorite season of the year, the magical period after Thanksgiving, the section of the calendar that straddles fall and winter, the time of gingerbread lattes and Christmas music and twinkling lights and possible snow and magical mystery.

I always used to feel sorry for people who were born around Christmas, feeling that they got short-changed out of presents and summertime pool parties. I don’t feel that way anymore, as I sit in our red den and gaze at the tree lit up, at the mantle studded with colored bulbs and the J-O-Y with the J and O holding our stockings, the Y waiting for his.

I arrived home to it yesterday, and if you’re tired of my constant writing of how wonderful The Husband is, then suck it (that includes you, TH) because it’s not likely to stop, even when the drawers and cabinets are left open and I curse a little, because this is what I arrived home to: lights strung across our porch, a new Christmas welcome mat, and a tree standing proudly with the gold proposal decoration topping it.

I was fresh off my first non-doctor, public outing in two weeks: a trip to the movies with The Sis and Sis-in-Law to see Breaking Dawn Part I–complete with non-pain-mediated C-section scene and delivery of semi-vampire baby. Not the best choice for a due-to-deliver-any-day mom-to-be with control issues, but there’s the consolation that it’s unlikely my delivery could ever go that badly, am I right? (Also in the Bad Idea Jeans category for anyone pregnant, especially with a boy: a viewing of the We Need to Talk about Kevin trailer. I mean, HELLA YIKES.) So I hauled my massive, tight, occasionally-contracting belly out of The Sis’s car and up the steps of our bedecked home, straight into a winter wonderland. All that was left for me to do was light some candles, turn on the music, pop open the Trader Joe’s sparkling cider (we were out of red wine) and settle into the couch, mesmerized. Christmas is happening. This baby is happening. Sometimes when TH and I turn to each other wide-eyed, thinking that it’s all a little too much, I realize: it is. It’s all just too much. So much.

I tested more limits today, going to Target for the first time in half a month, in the rain no less, and I escaped with a trunk full of food, a gingerbread latte only partially spilled on my maternity jeans, and a moment of irritation at someone’s car alarm persistently screaming until I realized it was mine. We’re over the hump, safety- and delivery-wise, and now I can relax and breathe a little (as much as possible with The Kid pressing into my diaphragm). I can also just sit still, watching the lights and viewing the Netflix-provided Christmas movies and reading the Nook-lent Hunger Games series and smelling the candles and marveling over a perfectly-timed (is it ever anything less?) and doubly-meaningful Advent season: a coming into place of years of hoping; a coming into view after years of cloudy vision; a coming into being after years (and months) of waiting; an arrival to rival so many others…all but One.