So I Hear ...

Hello Everyone.

Countdown to Baby: 15 days
Thanks to everyone who has sent in suggestions for boy's names. Apparently, Bob seems to think we already have one for a girl. He's wrong. Please help us with some girl's names by replying to this email.

Milo had fallen asleep in the truck, so my wife Kathleen decided to stay with him while Neva and I went to the hardware store. We had parked beside the neighboring grocery store and Kathleen hopped out to grab a sales flyer to read while waiting with Milo.

Now I am a man, and I was in a big box hardware store, but I really wasn't that long. Honestly. At 4-years-old, Neva doesn't yet have the patience for a full-scale assault on a hardware store. So I was surprised to find that the truck was empty when we returned. I knew right away where Kathleen and Milo were. I wondered if she had poked Milo with the flyer to wake him so she could make a run at the grocery store.

Neva and I wandered in looking for Kathleen. We walked from one end to the other and back again, checking each aisle but Kathleen was nowhere to be found. Was I wrong? Could Kathleen have gone to the hardware store looking for us? Not a chance.

Neva started to call out: "Mommy! Mommy!" She wasn't too loud but it seemed to me that every woman in the entire store double-checked for her kids, just in case they had lost one I suppose. Even those moms who didn't bring their kids seemed concerned. Must be something genetic, I thought.

We finally made our way to the front of the store again where we found Kathleen and Milo, who had already been through the check out and were waiting for us. "I heard Neva calling," she said matter-of-factly. Imagine, in a store the size of a football field, full of kids and their parents, my wife not only heard the calls but knew that it was her own daughter.

Happy sweeping,

Bob Gunther
Webmaster, ContestHound.com