November 3rd is a popular day to be born

Since it's birthday week at our house, I am going to share with you my favorite story from the day Grace was born.  It might be one of my most favorite stories ever.

This was the last time she ever slept this soundly until last week.

In order to fully appreciate how funny this story is, you need a little background information.  Eric and I moved into our house in 2009, so we lived here five years before Grace was born.  Our street is quiet, and while our neighbors are very neighborly, everyone keeps to themselves. A friendly wave is about as much interaction as we have on a regular basis.


Last October, Eric was outside raking when he noticed our neighbor (let's call him Mr Neighbor) was  outside raking too.  Eric is a friendly guy and it dawned on him that he had never formally introduced himself to Mr Neighbor. So, he set down his rake, walked across the street, and shook hands and officially met Mr Neighbor.  They exchanged pleasantries, and Mr Neighbor remarked how he noticed we were expecting a baby and his family was very excited for us.  He talked a little bit about his family, his son and daughter who were high school and middle school aged, and commented that their last baby was a bit of an "oops."  Eric laughed and said he had bought girl scout cookies from their daughter and that she was a very nice young lady.

What a lovely meeting.  A meet-cute, really.

Let's fast forward to the wee morning hours of Sunday November 3rd, 2013. I had been admitted to the hospital shortly after midnight, and just after we got settled in we heard a baby wail. Eric and I looked at each other, kind of giddy with anticipation, and I thought, welcome to the world little one!

Grace was born about eight hours later, and if you're curious about the details of the next few hours, feel free to read yesterday's post :)

Sunday night, my mom and sister (who also happens to be born on November 3rd!) were visiting us at the hospital.  Eric left to refill my water and see what was happening on the maternity floor.  He came back in our room with the craziest, most amused and perplexed look on his face that I have ever seen. I'm asking him right now to tell me the next bit, since he was the one who actually lived it:

"I was on my way back to the room and there was a long stretch of open hallway.  When I turned the corner, I saw a man and his young daughter. When I got closer, I knew it was our neighbor. (Mr. Neighbor!) I was so happy. I was confused, but just so happy he came to visit us.  Bemused even.  This is so surprising.  How did he figure this out, that we were here?  Did someone post it on social media or something? And as I start smiling, he also starts smiling. "What are you doing here?" I asked.  His daugher had a gift, and I started to reach out to take it and also started to shake his hand as he replied, "Same thing you are!" and he motioned to the room next door to ours.  "Yeah, my wife gave birth to a baby boy last night, just after midnight!"
"What the f?" I thought. And I realized I had to pretend to know what was going on while I digested this information.

And then it dawned on me.  Our conversation this fall was really about his baby who happened to also be born on the same day our baby was born."

Eric shared this story with the three of us and we all kind of stared at each other and giggled and whispered incredulously since they were immediately next door to us.  There are so many funny things about this -- Eric trying to take the gift, how nuts he must have seemed when he implied their daughter was an oops when Mr Neighbor was very clearly talking about his new son, how Eric thought they were coming to see us at the hospital even though they had only met once. 

OUR NEIGHBORS HAD A BABY ON THE SAME DAY AS US AND WE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THEY WERE EXPECTING ONE.

Does this make us the least observant, worst neighbors in the history of the world? Yes. Do we care since it gives us one of the most hilarious and bizarre stories for our cocktail party small talk arsenal?  No.

We still mostly keep to ourselves on our street, but we always wave when we see our birthday buddy coming and going with his sweet family who gave us the kind of story you can't even dream up.

Happy birthday, baby oopsie neighbor, happy birthday.