Ready, set, ...

We're all ready for the baby around here. I'm ready to get rid of the belly. Austin's ready to take 2 weeks off of work. Sammy's ready for the birthing pool to show up. (I told her it was an indoor swimming pool. Bad idea. It's really hard to take back jokes with 4-year-olds.) I'm pretty sure Cici is hoping the baby is actually going to be a baby puppy. In any case, we're all ready.

Yesterday, I was looking at my parents' calendar and realized that with all their trips and conferences I actually do need to have this baby soon if I want my mom to be here. On top of that, I finally finished my ridiculous labor project, so now I'm just fiddling around the house obsessively vacuuming corners.

From reading people's blogs and stories online, the ridiculous labor project seems to be a common phenomenon among pregnant women. I know I've had one (or two) with all three pregnancies. With Sammy my ridiculous project was patching and painting and making new curtains for our rental apartment...that we were moving out of two weeks after she was born. With Cici, I have fond memories of the craziness of fixing up our house to sell and crawling along our basement floor hammering in baseboards a day or two before she was born, and then the night before I gave birth going into this wild baking frenzy that produced apple streusal bars, (which weren't even that great.)

With baby #3, I decided that somehow it would be important if the house was decorated for her birth. I guess as a middle child I'm just a little sensitive about her feeling like she's just "another girl" and nothing special. You decorate for important occasions and her pending arrival definitely is one. So I started with our front door. Nothing fancy, just a simple spring wreath for our spring baby.

 

(Also grabbed a St. Patrick's Day bow-tie for our welcome bear. He's so cute he's ironic.)

 

 

Voila! The front of our house is festive! Then I moved on to our banister. After taking down the Christmas greenery it was looking a little bare.

The festive spring flags actually didn't take too long. About one day with the girls "helping." But then I decided that our huge, unwieldy fireplace mantle that I never know what to do with needed to tie in somehow with the banister for a cohesive look. Because remember, a cohesive decorating look is really important for when you have a new baby.

Voila again! A jaunty garden of spring flowers burst into bloom! They also burst all over my coffee table and floor and sofa for about two weeks, in a glorious hodge-podge of hot-glue sticks, paper cutters, scraps, twine, ribbon, and buttons. There's no way I could have my baby until the project was done. In my defense, making paper flowers when you're a detail-oriented person is a very tedious process. I averaged about one a day before I grew incredibly bored. Which I think is the opposite effect a labor project is supposed to have, thus making it into a ridiculous labor project.

Anyway, for anyone that cares to listen to me whine, with my project behind me, I'm now supremely ready to have a baby. Off to vacuum!

Rebozo Rocking

Rebozo technique

 

 

I'm kind of in a pregnancy rut. Normally I love writing on my blog, reading interesting books, having a life, etc., but these days my brain is very baby-centric, so the only things I really want to write, read, or do with my life involve some aspect of the baby coming this month. (Okay, probably next month.)

Last Saturday Austin and I went to a birth class at my midwives' office. I had a hard time convincing him to go. Before Sammy was born we took the hospital-sponsored series of birth classes, and I made him go with me to the last one on breastfeeding...the memory of extreme boredom is still seared on his brain. It was probably like going to a class on baking cookies when you don't own a kitchen. However, as the ever-supportive husband he came around and said he would go with me this time, probably because I mentioned that we would learn how to use a rebozo, which sounded intriguing and weird and possibly fun to make fun of.

I thought it went well. I could tell Austin was zoned out a few times, but overall the class was very practical, especially as to labor relief techniques that the husbands could help out with. I think Austin had fun rocking my belly with the rebozo, and is now gung-ho about me chopping wood in labor...apparently there is some doctor in China that makes his laboring women chop wood out back to get their babies in good birth positions. We also got a good chuckle when the teacher mentioned the birth video of a couple that had their baby out on their back deck...it's kind of our joke that we should have the baby on our back deck and shock the neighbors. Of course I borrowed the DVD afterwards. The dad seemed very proud of their deck baby..."Yeah, I tell people that we had our baby at 3 p.m. on a Sunday, ON OUR DECK!"

More baby prep updates to come. Hopefully nothing involving our deck.