lewis and clark had a journal. you, beth-annie, have a diary.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006
If only our bedroom looked this nice.
The nursery's been mostly done for quite a while, starting Memorial Day weekend when moM and daD painted it (thanks again!) and we got the crib. Now that we've gotten the last big piece (the changing table), washed things like blankets and sheets and put stuff up on the walls it's finally done done. I may be biased, but I like it a whole lot. :-)

These were taken this past weekend, so they're at 36 weeks or about 8 months.

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I suppose I could have worse problems.
Thanks to MSN streaming the "Veronica Mars" premiere online a week before it actually premieres on television, I now get to spend the next week trying to not watch it (because who wants to watch something that important in a teeny box on a webpage?) and trying to avoid spoilers for it many of the places I go online on a daily basis. Yipee.
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Thursday, September 21, 2006
Miscellaneous pregnancy updates;  feel free to skip.
-- They say you should have your bag packed for the hospital by 36 weeks.  That's, um, in two days.  Have we even started yet?  Nope.  Yeah, we may have a project for this weekend (besides getting nursery pics).  (Side note:  I'm trying to figure out what music or DVDs I might possibly take to try to relax or distract myself during labor, but I don't want to take something I love and then forever associate it with such an experience -- I still have certain things that conjure up memories of my period of nasty morning sickness, poor things.  So what's a girl to do?)

-- I seem to have misplaced our address book.  As in, I completely have no idea where it is.  That's a problem.

-- I hit the One Month 'Til My Due Date Day yesterday, so what did I do?  Started cleaning the garage.  Oooookaaaayyy...

-- Also, apparently the OMTMDDD is officially when the whole discomfort thing kicks itself into high gear and you can no longer be comfortable for more than about a minute doing anything:  standing, walking, sitting (in a hundred different positions), or even lying down.  Either that or I just had a bad day.  Or I maybe shouldn't have cleaned the garage.  :-P

-- Pam is pregnant on "The Office!"  Okay, that one's a lie (I had to fit it into the pregnancy topic somehow).  But "The Office" does premiere tonight, and consider me mucho excited.  (Josh and I just finished watching the entire previous season on DVD over the last week in preparation.)  "Grey's Anatomy" also resumes tonight, which I am marginally excited about but hardly mucho.
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Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Why people so stupid?
Last week the Village of Belleville voted on a referendum to build a new library. The current library is a mere 4600 sq. ft., a tiny, cramped, overcrowded building with over half the collection in a basement. The building was outgrown years ago, and it's only going to get worse as the town continues to grow. So what did the residents of Belleville do? The same thing they apparently did several years ago: voted it down. I realize that $2.6 million is not as small an amount for a town this size as it would be for a lot of other places, but when something's needed, it's needed. This wasn't going to be anything all flashy and extravagant, just something that actually looks and feels like a library and has three times the space as the old one. I'm betting most of the 235 people who voted "NO" haven't even set foot in the current library -- if they had, I don't see how they could have voted the way they did.

Grrrrrr.
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Monday, September 18, 2006
Edumacation.
We finished our childbirth/newborn class on Saturday, and I can honestly say that some of my ideas as to what I want (or don't want) during labor have changed since we took the class, especially in the area of pain medication.  I'm still very apprehensive about labor itself (who wouldn't be?), but I definitely feel more prepared overall.

That's also due to the OB tour we took at the hospital yesterday, where we got to see where we'll be, what we'll need to do, and just what to expect in general.  They have birth suites where you go through both labor and delivery, and they're all private, fairly large, and made to feel as "homey" as possible, with warm wood floors, soft recessed lighting available, a sitting area with a sofa and coffee table, TV/DVD/CD, and an oversize shower/tub (which apparently a lot of women find very soothing during labor).  The postpartum rooms, which are used for the rest of your stay starting a couple hours after your baby's birth, are much smaller but still all private (yay!), and still have a pull-out sofa for fathers to sleep on.  We went by the newborn nursery on the tour and there was all of only one baby there because they encourage new parents to spend as much time as possible with their babies and have them stay in their room rather than the nursery -- which I really like the thought of.

At the end of the tour we also got to see a day-old baby whose parents, it turns out, had actually been signed up for the exact tour time we were on, but ended up being there with their new baby instead.  :-P
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Friday, September 15, 2006
Anti-procrastination.
We've been trying to find birth announcements we like now so that we don't have to do it after the fact and can hopefully get them sent out sooner. We want something where we don't have to write in info for each one, meaning something that we order and is printed for us or something we can print ourselves -- though we also want a photo included and currently can't print our own photos as we only have a laser printer working. We also want something relatively inexpensive but not cheap-looking, and I tend to steer away from the cutesy cartoons and sayings and toward the softer, more subtle designs.

We have a couple of possibilities, but if anyone has any suggestions for good places to find such things (just doing a Google search is a little overwhelming in the magnitude of results), from personal experience or whatever, we welcome them.
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Thursday, September 14, 2006
Color me impressed.
This thing took some serious coordination and choreography. And, near as I can tell, it's all one single shot. Dang.
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Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Freak lightning.
Until today we'd had about three days of straight rain -- basically just relatively light stuff or mist pretty close to constantly, no thunderstorms or anything. So the other night at about 2am it was doing its typical lightly raining thing, and I had just gotten back in bed after getting up to go to the bathroom. I closed my eyes to go back to sleep and suddenly through my eyelids saw an intensely bright flash followed immediately -- so immediately that "followed" almost isn't the right word -- by perhaps the loudest crash of thunder I've ever heard. It completely freaked me out and jolted Josh out of a deep sleep. I would've sworn the bolt actually struck our house if it weren't for the fact that the house didn't shake or react in any other way -- but it was obviously within at most a block of us. The weirdest thing about it is that it came completely out of nowhere. I was awake for a while before and a while after the bolt, and there was absolutely nothing else, not even the teeniest of rumbles, nor was there at any other time during our three days of raininess. How bizarre.
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Tuesday, September 12, 2006
I know, I know, it's been a while.
I haven't been doing as much lately, there's only so much pregnancy talk you people can take, and the same goes for television (the new fall season is getting underway, afterall).  So, them's my excuses.

But, I have to say something or I'll lose my readers, so here we go.

We have now bought most of what we need babywise, including (finally) that changing table we'd had our eye on for a while and even some of the little things like baby shampoo, burp cloths and diapers -- because, though unlikely, I could conceivably go into labor any time (a baby born after 37 weeks is not considered premature, and I'm only a couple of weeks away from that point).  The good news is that sometime this week I should be able to post some pictures of the nursery, which I think is so cute.  :-)

We also took our first day of childbirth class over the weekend, which was both reassuring and frightening at the same time.  Next weekend we finish the class (and get to the newborn care part, which should be more fun than the labor and delivery part) and take a hospital tour.  Um, yeah, it's all getting kind of close.  And you really know that's true when your doctor tells you that at your next appointment she can check to see how far you're dilated if you want.  Yikes.

Speaking of doctor's appointments, I had one yesterday and all is well.  And the baby is head down, which is a good thing (doesn't mean that couldn't still change, but it's a better sign than not).

Happy voting!
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