The Hits Keep Comin'... Plus New BB Pic (17 Weeks)

If I was hoping after my last post that out car troubles were over for a while, then I was sadly mistaken.  About a week after getting our new van, my truck started jerking and spewing white smoke out of the tailpipe just as I got home from work one day.  I had our usual mechanic check it out and he says that there is water in the oil, which means either a cracked head or a cracked block.  Either way, the engine is shot.  We just had the engine replaced a little over two years ago, which is good because that means it's still under warranty, but it's still extremely annoying.  At the moment I'm still trying to gather my receipts for repairs and maintenance since the engine was replaced to prove that it has been correctly maintained so I can call next week and have them pick it up.  Here's hoping I can get it fixed for little to no cost.

Jamie had his first band concert last week.  They sounded pretty good for a bunch of kids that have only been playing their instruments for four months.  Each instrument meets as its own class, so in between "Jingle Bells" and "Beethoven's Ninth" they each had a short demonstration in which they played a part of a song they had chosen as a class - the clarinets played "Jolly Old St. Nicholas."  While I have to say that the clarinet is probably my least favorite instrument to listen to solo, they still sounded pretty good as a section.  Just, clarinet-y.

The inevitable plod toward the end of the holidays continues.  Winter Break officially started this Friday, so the kids will have two-and-a-half weeks to drive each other and their mother crazy; I'm taking a few days off after Christmas so I can mediate a little and hopefully avoid any bloodshed.  We got the very last of our Christmas shopping for the kids done earlier this week and are just waiting for things to ship from Amazon.  The estimated delivery date for everything is "December 20th-24th", so it should all be here before Christmas eve.  I think we've decided to do our family Christmas morning on the day before since Christmas is on Sunday this year; the idea of Christmas being on Sunday is nice in a way, but the reality of trying to get everybody up, presents opened, and get to church by 10:00 paints a less the Rockwell-esque picture.  Jamie and I are going to help with Celebrate Jesus at the church tonight.  I believe he's a crowd member in one of the scenes, and I'm helping direct traffic since one of our friends has been trying to get me to help with that for the last few years.  Jamie wanted to sign up for tonight because it is the last night and the workers do a walk though behind the last car.  Apparently, it's quite a hoot.

We had a prenatal check up this week.  The doctor had a hard time finding the heartbeat with the doppler again - it took her a few minutes the last time - so she opted to check the heartbeat with the ultrasound machine instead.  This also gave us a chance to tentatively find out the sex earlier than the twenty-week ultrasound.  The doctor didn't see any external organs, and saw three white spots that apparently indicate the folds of skin between the......um, girly bits.  So, unofficially, we are having another girl; the doctor said she was "pretty sure, but don't paint the nursery pink yet."  I had prayed before Denine was pregnant with Asher that, if we were going to have a fourth child, the third would be a boy and the fourth a girl so that she'd have an older brother close to her age.  Otherwise, if we were only going to have three, I wanted #3 to be a girl.  When baby #3 turned up male, I was confident that we were supposed to have a fourth, and that it would be a girl.  So given that, plus the fact that a friend of ours who has an uncanny knack for being right about these things said she thought it was a girl, too, I am not really surprised.  Happy that things are panning out the way I prayed they would, but not surprised.

 

We've entered that "my baby looks like an alien" phase. 

 

She's made comments about thinking she looks more pregnant earlier on this time around, but I'm pretty sure she's keeping pace.  Check out 15 weeks and 18 Weeks for comparison.

A Juxtaposition of Conflicting Emotion... Plus 1st BB Pic #2 (14 Weeks)

Okay, last night was insane!  When I originally started writing this post yesterday it was chocked full of moaning and complaining about the situation with our van, the short version being that, after five trips to the mechanic and about $2500 it was deemed not worth/safe to repair due to a combo of cracked head gasket and worn piston bearing.  However, the simultaneous occurrence of two very unrelated circumstances have completely changed my tone.

First, the happy news:  My parents, in their infinite love and generosity, saw fit to bless us with a new(er), and most importantly working, mini-van!  On the way out of church last night, halfway across the parking lot, my dad stops, holds out a key, and points at a van parked a few spaces from our Venture.  I was dumbstruck, to say the least; anyone reading this knows I am not often speechless, but all I could manage at the moment was "thank you."  Our vehicle situation has been a point of concern for me for quite some time, increasingly so over the last several weeks.  When I got the news that there was essentially nothing that could be done to fix the Venture and I had to resign myself to letting my pregnant wife drive around with an infant under the imminent threat of total engine failure, I was completely at a loss for what to do.  This was particularly frustrating given the fact that, had we not poured substantial money into keeping the Venture running, we might have had enough to buy a replacement, but the situation being what it is, we don't.  Our whole family went through Financial Peace University together and have committed not to no longer incur debt, so buying a car on payments was out of the question.  In the end, that's essentially why Mom said they decided to buy us a new van, because they've watched us work hard to get out of debt (including already cash flowing one baby and working to cash flow another) and didn't want to see us set back.  Thank you, Mom and Dad, for your love and support!

 

Taa-Daa!

And now the sad news:  Before we left church last night, my sis-in-law received a call from her mother saying that her uncle Jeff (who also happens, for those unaware, to be my aunt's brother) had been found at home unconscious and was being rushed to the hospital.  There was no further information at time, and we all headed out to the parking lot to head to our respective homes (see above).  While my parents, Denine, and I were checking out the van, Dad received a phone call from my sis-in-law that Jeff had been called home to the Lord.  We all felt like we had been punch in the stomach; as far as anyone knows Jeff was in perfectly good health and this has come as a complete surprise, as I understand it the doctors still are not sure exactly what happened.  Being a loss on two side of my family, since he is both my sis-in-law's and my cousins' uncle, combined with how influential he was in the church were I grew up, the weight of his loss is being heavily felt.  It's a testament to how great a man he was, a truly gifted teacher and scholar, and a outstanding example of what a Christian man should be.  While our world is a little darker for the loss of such a brightly shining light, we rejoice that he is resting with our Lord.

Okay, if anyone can still read after that - I got to cheat and take a break after writing it - general housekeeping issues:

Despite the overlying pall of crappy vehicular conditions the past few weeks, we have had a series of enjoyable family weekends.  First was our youngest nephew's third birthday party, which are always fun, particularly since he's old enough now to really grasp the concept of getting presents now.  Then we had our family outing to the Renaissance Festival.  Our kids had been saving up their money for several weeks in anticipation; Ren came away with a floral wreath headdress (that she wore maybe twenty minutes total) and a bendy rubber dragon like her cousins have, and Jamie came away with a katana and two daggers, which now adorn the wall in their bedroom.  Lastly, of course, was Thanksgiving, which was just my family, parents, and grandmother, as this was my brother's family's year to spend Thanksgiving with his in-laws.  The day was filled with not but food and television, and Mom sorting through Christmas lists, as Thanksgiving should be.

We have our first baby bump pic for this pregnancy.  We kept procrastinating, and so ended up missing the opportunity for a 13-week pic, which is where I started the last time.  I'm going to try and get at least some on comparable dates to the last pregnancy for comparison.  We're still at the "every four weeks" stage for prenatal check ups, so there's no news on that front, and there really hasn't been as much going on in relation to the pregnancy this time around; there's not really a lot of shopping and preparation to do when the last time around was only fourteen months ago...

 

Eh, I got nothin'...

Needless to say, my emotions are all over the place right now.  Hopefully things will calm down a little from here out.  Or at least only be as crazy as is normal during the holidays.  We should have a couple of quiet weekends before Celebrate Jesus at our church, and then Christmas the following weekend.

P.S.  Sorry if there are any typos or nonsense sentences in here, but I'm way too drained to proofread right now.  Maybe I'll edit later.

Here We Go Again...

Well, ladies and gentlemen, lads and lasses, I've been given the final clearance to drop the bomb!  It's something that we've suspected for some time, but now have official photographic* evidence.  That's right, possibly the worst kept secret of the decade:  We are, once again, expecting a baby!  Yeah, I don't think anybody reading this is really surprised, but I felt the need to be theatrical anyway.  Here's the answers to the most common questions that come up when we tell people the news:

• The due date is May 23rd.
• Yes, we planned to get pregnant again, just not quite so soon.  We were actually planning to shoot for having the next one when Asher was about 18 months old; as it is, he'll be about 14 months.
• Yes, we do know how this keeps happening, and were fully prepared for the possibility that it might.  For the record: If you are ever told that breast feeding is an effective form of birth control for at least six months, don't bank on it - we got about five months out of that.  And Asher was 100% breast fed, right up until Denine's milk dried up all-of-a-sudden (clue #2 that she was preggers, though I can't remember what clue #1 was at present...)

It's hard to believe that, about fourteen months ago, Asher looked just like this.  Think about that the next time you start to say "they grow up so fast"...

In other news:
We just got our van back from the shop for the third time in a month.  I failed to mention the first time (which happened before my last post) because it's not really that eventful to put my twelve-year-old van in the shop.  That time it was the starter that needed replacing, plus a few other general maintenance things that I had the mechanic do while it was there.  We'd had it back a week or two when the brakes started hemorrhaging fluid, and by Halloween weekend it was leaking so badly that refilling the reservoir didn't even help.  Which would have been bad enough on it's own, but this was also the weekend before we had to leave for our trip to Austin.  So we had to arrange a rush job to get that fixed, which ended up requiring a new master brake cylinder.  Then, during our trip, the van starts overheating (unfortunately not a rare occurrence) and eventually red-lines on Sunday, right before we need to head home.  We managed to make it back to town by not running the air conditioner excessively and topping off the radiator when we stopped, and Denine limped it along until we could get it in the shop on Tuesday.  The diagnosis this time was a cracked radiator, although thankfully they didn't find anything else wrong after they replaced it (well, nothing with the coolant system, at least); I was fully expecting the thermostat and/or O2 sensor to be baked.  I did say that the van overheating is not a rare occurrence, right?  All said, I've dumped about $2000 into the van in the last month, which on the one hand I really hate to do because it feels like throwing good money after bad, but on the other is less than a new(er) minivan would cost me.  There's a couple of other things that have been found wrong with it throughout this experience, which have the potential to turn into major repairs if they decide to go SNAFU on me.  Here's hoping/praying that it survives without any more major repairs until we can finish paying off debt (and having babies!) and we can afford a new(er) one.

Speaking of Halloween, it was a typical Bailey Family Hallow's Eve Weekend.  Which is to say "fairly hectic."  The costumes this year were a Camp Half-Blood camper (from the Percy Jackson books) for Jamie, a monarch butterfly fairy for Ren (provided by Gramma), and a homemade Tigger onesie for Asher.  In other words, we went relatively cheap and low-effort this year; I think Denine was due after the hard work she put in on their Jedi and Star Killer costumes last year.  We had our church's Fall Festival the Saturday before Halloween, during which Denine manned the van for Trunk-or-Treating, while I ran around with the kids.  Most of the time was actually spent standing in line so the kids could play in these giant inflatable plastic balls that they got inside of and rolled around in a pool; I've got footage on my iPod, but I'm still working on getting it accessible from here.  On Halloween proper, we went over to my brother and sis-in-law's house to Trick-or-Treat as usual, and were joined by a couple of families from their neighborhood that we're getting to know, one of which is the family of a friend of my nephew, the other of which is that family's new neighbors that moved here recently and have a daughter about Ren's age.  I always have fun Trick-or-Treating, but it really stinks when it's on a work night.  We seriously need to get something passed to make Halloween a national holiday and have it moved to the last Friday in October.  Contact your elected official!

 The whole brood

 

Bouncin' is what Tiggers do best!

 

The balls that we stood in line fooooor-EEEEEH-verrrrr for

As mentioned above, we had or weekend in Austin with Denine's parents, brother, and sis-in-law to celebrate my father-in-law's 60th birthday this past weekend.  We drove up Friday, and Saturday we all went to Hamilton Pool, which is pretty freaking cool.  For lunch we headed out to the Oasis on Lake Travis, a restaurant built on the cliffs above the lake that has a killer view.  We then poked around the shops in the complex, a mixture of gift shops, antiques, and what I suppose would be artisan galleries; some art, but also handmade goods.  Apparently the owner of Oasis is building up the complex around it into an art scene; I highly recommend checking it out if you're in the area and are into that kind of thing, it's pretty cool.  Sunday the plan was to just kick around Austin a little before we had to head home.  Denine's mom wanted to buy her a book, and we were on the way to Barnes and Noble when the van decided to overheat.  So, we made it to B'n'N, took everyone else back to the hotel, and booked it home.  Not the best ending, but hey, whatchya gonna do?  Exclude the car overheating on Sunday, it was a really fun time, and was the first weekend Denine and I have had sans-kiddos since.....2007, I believe.

I think that's about it.  Denine is down with doing regular belly bump pics again this time around, so I should be posting more regularly, at least for the next several months.  We did the first one of those around thirteen weeks last time, so I'm shooting to start around the same time again.  Plus, that should be just about time for a Thanksgiving post.  We got most of the Christmas shopping done for the kids today, so I guess we're officially in holiday mode now.  Geez, it seems like we just did this.  Except with one less child.  And we'll have one more the next time.  *sigh*

*Yeah, I know, that's not really a photograph, but "sonographic evidence" just didn't sound right.  Although, "ultrasonic evidence" would've sounded pretty cool...

Gettin' Back in the Groove...

Life is finally regaining some degree of normalcy.  Just in time for the holidays!  I officially went back to my regular workplace and my regular 40-hour schedule two weeks ago.  I've spent the last couple of weeks recuperating; I kept thinking about posting, but could never quite work up the energy.  Besides, I seem to have settled into a pattern of posting about every six weeks or so.  Not as often as I'd like, but hey...

The kids have survived the first six weeks of school.  Jamie's grades were pretty good, all A's and B's; Ren's were not so much.  She brought home a C in language and an F in spelling, which she would have been in serious trouble for if not for the fact that she previously brought home an F on her progress report and had made significant improvement since then - it was just too late to pass.  We struggled with her spelling grade all last year, but all her spelling tests since the progress report have been A's and B's, so I guess Denine finally found something that works.  I felt bad that I couldn't really help while I was working all the overtime, but obviously they've got a good thing going now, so I'm just staying out of it.  Being that I was expected to bring home all A's when I was in school (note: that doesn't mean I did), and that Jamie has always been an A-B student, it's hard for me to accept that Ren just may be more of a C student when it comes to English.  She tends to do better in science and math, so maybe she's just in line to be an engineer.  Or a math teacher - she does remind me a lot of Jamie's AP math teacher this year.

(Last minute update:  Ren brought home her progress report yesterday - all A's and B's, with an A in spelling!)

A couple weeks back, on a Wednesday night, our air conditioner completely quit working.  Actually, that's not correct - the coil just got so clogged that no air could move through it.  So we finally had to bite the bullet and call someone to come out and fix the AC.  We got the number of an AC guy from my sis-in-law - we were not happy with our old AC guy after the last time he came out.  I'm really glad that we decided to get a second opinion.  If you'll recall from my last post, we had previously been told that we needed to replace at least the coil and possibly the compressor, to the tune of about $2500-$4700.  Well, the new guy came out and checked everything Thursday afternoon, and said he could come back Friday morning to clean the coil and check for leaks.  When he got everything opened up Friday and showed me the coil there was so much gunk built up, it looked like a piece of gray felt over the coil.  After all was said and done, the coil was clean and there were no leaks; the official diagnoses from the AC guy was that, if it were his home, he wouldn't replace anything.  So my $2500-$4700 AC replacement turned into a $235 AC repair.  Needless to say, we have a new AC guy.  And an AC that doesn't have to run all afternoon and evening just to manage 77 degrees!  Now I just wish we'd called this guy two months ago.

I've had the opportunity to get in on the beta for the new Star Wars MMO (which would be another reason I've had a hard time finding time to blog lately).  I've learned a couple of things playing it in the last week or so.  Firstly, the game is really, really good!  This is the first game in a while that I've been really excited about it's release, which says a lot because I had pretty much written it off before I had a crack at it.  It's also the first MMO I've given even a passing thought to paying the monthly subscription for since I quit WoW and Star Wars Galaxies several years ago.  Secondly, I can get really, really addicted to a good MMO!  If I do sign up for this game when it streets in December, I'm definitely going to have to set some limits for myself.  In the meantime, the game went down indefinitely this weekend while they work on a new build, and when it finally does go up it'll probably take my DSL about 36 hours to download the new game files, so I'm viewing this as an  opportunity to take a little break.  Or at least as an opportunity to get back into some free MMOs, such as Eden Eternal or Runes of Magic.  Hello, my name is Jonathan, and I'm a level-grind-aholic.

The next month is going to be pretty busy, we have our church's Fall Festival this weekend, Halloween on Monday, a trip to Austin for my father-in-law's birthday the next weekend, our nephew's birthday the weekend after that, tentatively going to Renaissance Festival the next weekend, and finally Thanksgiving.  Whew!  We should get to take a breather for a couple weeks before christmas observations officially start, then probably three weekends' worth of Chirstmas and New Year's.  Let the Holidays begin!

The (Hot)dog Days of Summer...

Ladies and gentlemen, I am tapped.  As if this time of year wasn't busy enough with birthdays, school starting, and the Holidays on the horizon, work has also picked up for me.  Sort of.  In the wake of my own employer (or at least the business unit I work in) being incredibly slow right now, I have been temporarily loaned out to another engineering firm to help them with a project they are behind on.  I have currently been approved to work 70-hour weeks, although I am actually working closer to 55 hours.  In addition to the ten-to-eleven-hour days, my drive time has also doubled, from about thirty-to-forty-five mintues a day to about one-to-one-and-a-half hours - still not bad by Houston Metro standards, but a significant increase nonetheless.  I'm only having to leave the house thrity minutes earlier than I normally would, but it's amazing how profound a difference that small amount of sleep can make.  The work is tolerable, but only just; when I was sent over it was understood that the company borrowing me was in need of a "CAD blaster" to help with picking up marks*.  As unenthusiastic as I was at the prospect of going to work for another company, albeit temporarily, I was at least happy about the fact that the time should pass quickly if all I was to do was pick up marks for eight weeks.  When I got there, I learned that such was not the case.  Instead, I am helping with menial design work at the tail-end of a large project I am not familiar with.  In addition, this is a type of project that I am not used to working on - a new offshore facility, whereas all of my experience is with existing onshore work.  So, I'm trying to look on the bright side and view this as an opportunity to both get some experience working offshore and to make some extra money, but I am less than thrilled with the whole arrangement.  Hopefully the eight week duration I was originally told will be accurate, although there is another guy from my company on his last week here who was supposed to be done last December.

Speaking of extra money, this heat wave has been rough on our air conditioner.  Several weeks ago we had an AC guy come check everything out because it was taking a long time to cool down the house.  He said the cooling coil in the attic appeared to be original, which makes it over 30 years old, and that it looked like it might never have been cleaned (although this is the same AC guy that replaced the furnace before I owned the house, so one hopes that he at least cleaned it then - but that was a long time ago, too).  In addition, the AC unit is about 14 years old and could stand replaceing as well.  All said, by his estimate, we are looking at $4500 to get the AC up to snuff.  The problem being that we lack $4500.  So, we are currently limping along with what we have, which means that the AC is running pretty much non-stop from about 8:00 a.m. until whenever we go to bed just to keep the house around 78-76.  I don't know what that is doing to our electric bill (I'm too afraid to ask), but I'm sure it can't be good; we already have a larger water bill than normal from trying to keep the lawn alive, although Denine alleviated that somewhat by running over the sprinkler a couple weeks ago.

Ren's birthday party was the weekend before last, so we have the second of the three Summer birthdays behind us now.  As usual, the party was a veritable blitzkrieg of six-to-eight-yer-old enthusiasm.  All I remember is a blur of yelling, small people, and wrapping paper.  And donuts.  The overwhelming theme for gifts this year seemed to be crafts and jewelry.  I've never seen so many beads and plastic jewels in all my life; I predict it should take her until sometime next week to use it all.  We've still got Jamie to go, but he just has friends sleep over for his party nowadays, so it's pretty lowkey.  I don't think anybody has bought any presents for him yet, and when we asked him the other day what he wanted for his birthday he just kind of shrugged.  It's like he's turning into a teenager or something.

School started last week, much to Denine's relief.  The kids were duly excited; they are both the type to bemoan  school while they're in it, but admit that they are ready to go back after long breaks.  Jamie seems to be adjusting to junior high well, getting into the groove of changing classes and whatnot.  I was a little annoyed when I found out that the junior high students aren't allowed to carry backpacks to class.  I was telling Jamie that I only used to only go to my locker four times a day (start of the day, before lunch, after lunch, and end of the day) to make the most efficient use of my time between classes, and he told me they can't do that because they can't carry backpacks - and they have way too much stuff to just carry around.  So instead, they have to use part of their five-minute passing period to change out books between every class.  Apparently the whole spiel they give the parents about teaching our children important time management skills takes a backseat to the paranoia of a child carrying a weapon to class.  Oh, except for last period, when they make them take everything they need to take home to class with them, so they don't make the busses wait in the heat more then five minutes. 

Apparently, it's a miracle the human race survived this long, because if the armed pre-teens don't get you, the oppressive heat will...


*For those who are not in the industry, this involves entering marks that engineers and/or other designers have made on hardcopies of electronic drawings into the drawings themselves; relatively mindless, though arguably skilled, work for which I have a proven aptitude. 

I'm not dead yet...

*taps screen*

Er....hello?  Is anybody out there?

*wipes cobwebs off the blog*

Yeah, it's been kind of a while, hasn't it.  Turns out that with three kiddos in the house I'm either too busy or too tired to care about updating a blog regularly.  Who knew, right?  Anywho, I figured there's been enough goings on that I really ought to drag my tuckus back into the blogosphere and catch everybody up.  So here goes...

The first big news since my last post is that we finally got the gerbils we had promised the kids around Christmas on Memorial Day.  This one wasn't entirely my fault that it took so long to get done.  I have about the same opinion on buying small rodents from chain pet stores that I do about buying dogs there (which I don't think you can do anymore anyway) and that is that a) they tend to not be terribly healthy and b) I don't like to support "breeders" that sell their animals to retailers (aka [applicable animal] mills).  I much prefer to get a healthy animal from a reputable breeder that cares something about the well-being of the animal in question and the breed in general, and isn't just in it for the money.  Granted, it is possible that a licensed breeder is just in it for the money, but more often than not they aren't, and you can bet your sweet bippy that anyone selling to a retailer is.  *looks down at soapbox*  Woops, how'd that get there.  *steps down*  Anywho, I found some gerbil breeders "in the area," by which I mean "within a day trips' drive," and the only one that got back to me (who happened to be located near Boerne) said she wouldn't have any pups available until the end of May.  The breeder contacted me about mid-May to let me know that the pups would be available to adopt on Memorial day and to give me a chance to reserve a couple.  So, we loaded up for Asher's second car trip, which went somewhat more smoothly than his first.  The only real problem we had was that around about Columbus traffic on I-10 just about stopped on the way back in, so we had something of an adventure following back-roads the last stretch home.  At the end of the day, however, we ended up getting our new charges, Corbin and Colton, home safely and they have been adjusting to life in the Bailey household, or more correctly the kids' room.  The only problem that we have had with them so far is that their wheel tends to squeak and they like to run at night, so their nighttime wheel privileges have been revoked, but all in all they are fun and it gives the kids some responsibility (with oversight, of course) which is good.

Our church had their VBS a couple of weeks ago which was, as always, a lot of fun for the kids and very tiring for the adults; I haven't been able to manage volunteering the last few years, but I have in the past, so I can attest to the amount of work that's put into it.  Jamie was too old to attend this year so he signed up to help out.  He was originally going to be helping in one of the story rooms doing a skit, but there was some concern over his epilepsy so he got moved to helping in the one of the craft rooms (which is where Denine was, but not in the same room).  I think he was a little bummed about that, but ended up having fun helping the kids with their crafts.  He's really pumped for next year, when he'll be old enough to be a group leader for the kids attending.....which is, frankly, quite frightening to me.  Ren, naturally, had a blast.  Which goes without saying, as long as she doesn't have to sit still and/or be quiet.  The church always does something special on Wednesday night on the week of VBS to try and bring in the attending kids and their parents that aren't members.  Last year we had an astronaut come in and talk because the VBS theme was space, and that was really interesting and had the kids riveted (he spent a lot of time on things kids would be into, like "how do astronauts go to the bathroom?").  This year we had Kidz Blitz! Live come in.  Total.  Polar.  Opposite.  Seriously though, it was a blast.  Not sure what it had to do with our theme of exploration (ie Indiana Jones) though...

I finally got a chance to buy bows for Jamie and myself a couple of weeks ago, too.  This is something I had started looking into about two years ago, and had actually ordered a bow for myself (I'm left-eye dominant, so I shoot left-handed, hence the need to order).  After the first time I called to check on the order and was told "we'll call you when it comes in, you don't need to call us" I decided to take them at their word.  Shortly after that, the 50-hour work weeks I'd been enjoying dried up and all my spare cash dried up with them, so I chalked it up to providence.  I recently had the opportunity to help out another discipline at work on a rush job and was approved for 50s, so I decided to use some of the OT money to finally get our archery supplies.  Of course, when I started looking at this stuff the first time Jamie was two years younger and several inches shorter, so I was intending to get him a cheap fiberglass bow to see how interested he really was.  Now that he's almost as tall as me I decided I needed to spring for a legitimate bow if he was going to get a fair shake at it, so that cost a little more than I had planned, but I figure he'd waited more-or-less patiently for almost two years for it, so what the heck.  We got a few hay bales last weekend to set up a range in our back yard (I tried a few test shots with what I had and determines that plywood does not a good backstop make) and got a chance this weekend we can get out and shoot some.  Jamie and I are both seriously in need of lessons (and Jamie could use some strength training, poor kids can hardly draw his bow) but we're having fun in the meantime.

We sold my grandparents' old conversion van RV, so all the work I did cleaning out the garage is finally paying off.  I had to install a new garage door opener before we could actually use it, but now we can at least park the van in the garage so it doesn't get nearly as hot.  It's nice to park in a garage again, the last time I got to do that on a regular basis it was still the 20th century.

 

A vehicle.  In the garage!  (Yes, it was that big of a deal)

We got my brother to take Asher's three-month pictures the first weekend in July, couldn't get him to smile to save our lives.  What I saw of them was still pretty cute, though.  Currently waiting on Bro to get them posted so we can tell him which ones we like and he can "process" them; I'll get them posted on here ASAP after that (promise!).

We just got back from our first trip of the summer to the neighborhood pool, which was also Asher's first time in a pool.  He was pretty completely disinterested....

All decked out for the pool

Chillin' in the agua

That's about all the major developments of the last couple months.  I'd make a promise to be better about regular updates, but you've all heard that before so I wouldn't expect you to believe me anyway.  Of course, I've only got a few weeks before birthdays start hitting, then it's fast and furious until about March.  So at least I should have stuff to post about, should I manage to get off my keister and do it.

"Easter Hoppenings"

Well, we've made through another round of holiday events.  Our Easter started with the Mustang event three weekends ago.  They decided to have it at the zoo this year, which was a little different.  Besides the requisite egg hunt and face painting, and eating cookies and lemon bars, there wasn't a lot to do.  My brother's kids missed the egg hunt because they did it early, and Jamie is too old, so Ren was nice and shared some of her loot with everybody since she was the only person who actually got to participate.  Honestly, I was a little underwhelmed but it did give us a chance to go to the zoo, which was fun, and we didn't have to buy water while we were there since we could raid the refreshments.  This was the first trip to the zoo for Ren (and Asher, obviously) and the first time Jamie has been since before he was in school; there was some debate about whether it was my first time or not, seeing as I grew up here until I was seven, but we settled on agreeing that it was the first that I have been time in my adult life.

The weekend before last was our trip to Dallas for LTC* with our church group.  That was.....interesting with a newborn; Asher did pretty well, but he didn't seem to care for the general chaos.  His feeding routine got completely thrown off and he didn't care for sleeping in the hotel room, so nobody got much sleep all weekend.  Getting there and back was also interesting.  It took about eight hours going due to two or three stops to feed Asher (one complete with dead battery that a lovely Buc-ee's employee was nice enough to help us get started again) and one stop for lunch.  The return trip was better, it only took us six hours, stopping once to feed the baby and once to feed everybody.  All in all everything went pretty well for a trip with a one-month-old.  Denine commented on the way home that she was glad we went last year or this year probably would have been horrible.  The way our church does LTC is to get a suite at the hotel we stay at and provide meals so that everyone doesn't have to spend a fortune eating fast food all weekend.  Imagine a group of about 300 people, over half of which are kids between the ages of nine and eighteen, trying to cram into a single hotel suite to get food.  On top of that is the event itself, which involves spending a day-and-a-half wandering around an over-capacity hotel trying to make it to last minute practices and event times.  While it was second nature to me after spending years doing similar events for band in high school, Denine wasn't used to that and found it more than a little stressful.  This year, however, she knew what to expect, albeit with adding an infant to the mix.  It also helped that we've gotten to know one of the other couples from our life group that also has kids that age pretty well over the last year, so we pretty much just let her figure out when who needed to be where and followed them around all weekend (love ya, Susan!  >>"^,,^"<<  ).

Event-wise, Jamie got three gold team medals (drama, chorus, and Bible Bowl) and an individual bronze in Bible Bowl this year, which is pretty awesome.  Next year BB will be over all of Genesis, so hopefully we'll get started a little bit earlier.  We started Revelation in January this year and barely made it through before Easter; Genesis is over twice as long, and Easter is two weeks earlier next year.  On the up side, most of the kids know most of Genesis anyway so it should be more like an in-depth review, as opposed to Revelation, which most of them had never read before.

The only other noteworthy happening has been Jamie gearing up for band next school year.  We had our first meeting for band last Monday, which was just to go over again what instrument choices they have and sign up for interviews to select an instrument.  Jamie's decided that he wants to play clarinet, which is nice because he can use Denine's old one (which she was getting quite emotional about when we pulled it out of the closet the other day), and the band director and already told him that shouldn't be a problem, so hopefully his interview is just a formality.  I keep trying to get him to go for oboe or bassoon, but he apparently really likes the clarinet; percussion, unfortunately, seems to rank above brass but below woodwinds.  Oh well, there's still two more (and a theoretical third) that might be drummers when they grow up, so all hope is not lost; in the words of Yoda, "there is another."  I guess maybe we should start looking into band boosters now.

Anywho, we've spent the week trying rather unsuccessfully to catch up on rest, but this weekend should be blissfully uneventful.  Hopefully we can get everybody back in a routine and attain some semblance of normalcy.  At least until the kids get out of school in about a month and everything gets shot again.  I keep forgetting and then being reminded that I'll have a junior high student at the end of the summer. 

*shudder*

 P.S.  This was originally written last week but I haven't gotten around to actually posting it until now.  Something to do with not with not having much computer time between helping wrangle three kids and being exhausted from lack of sleep.  Mea Culpa (I seem to be having a lot of these lately...).

* For those of you who read this and don't already know, LTC (properly LTNTC, or North Texas Leadership Training for Christ) is a Church of Christ youth conference held in Dallas every year where students in 3rd through 12th grade compete in events designed to encourage active leadership such as drama, chorus, song leading, scripture reading, poetry, visual art, Bible Bowl and Bible Quiz.  It's a pretty big event for a lot of congregations; students spend sometimes several months preparing for events.  It is always held on Easter weekend, which seems counter-intuitive for a church event, but it allows them to have events on Friday evening with people coming from out of town, and they also know they can get a hotel or convention center that weekend (it's always held at the Hilton Anatole now, but I remember it being at the Dallas Convention Center when I was in high school).  You can check out the website here (http://www.ntltc.org/).

At Long Last!

Okay, I meant to have an update posted a long time ago, but being alternately busy and tired has prevented me from getting around to it.  Mea Culpa.  As I'm sure anyone reading this on a regular basis already knows, Asher was born about two weeks ago on March 24.  I'm not going to go into a lot of detail except to say that everyone is home and doing great now.  That's because I'm going to post the running journal I promised to keep during the labor and delivery below, so everyone can get all the details from that.  I was at one point going to go through and edit the journal but have now decided not to, both to accurately convey my thoughts and emotions at the time, and because of the fore mentioned busy-/tiredness.  I go back to work next week, so maybe things will return to some semblance of normalcy - as much as is possible anyway - and I can post a more verbose entry then.  For now, you get the quick and dirty version.  Enjoy!

3-23-2011

22:55 – We got to the hospital at 9:00 as scheduled.  Denine’s been admitted, played 20+ questions with the nurse, and gotten hooked up to the monitors and stuck with an IV (complete with blown vein in her left arm).  Unfortunately, that’s been about it; we’ve been waiting for about an hour for the nurse to come back and actually start her anti-biotic and/or give her the Cytotec.  This is probably my least favorite aspect of any hospital visit:  everything seems to take forever.  Unless there’s an emergency.  So I guess I should be grateful that nobody seems to be in a hurry.

Our deluxe suite for the weekend!

3-24-2011

00:30 – The nurse came back about a half-hour ago and started both the Cytotec and the anti-biotic, so we’re good to go now.  Now we wait some more, but it’s not on people this time.  We’re both going to try and get some sleep while we still can.

06:50 – Last night was kind of rough.  The alarm on Denine’s IV machine kept going off because it was detecting air bubbles in the line (which is apparently not a big deal, despite the fact that it sets of the alarm).  After the third or fourth time it went off a nurse came in and tried to flush her IV, and discovered that the vein had blown.  We had to wait for about an hour for them to come start the new one, so we didn’t really get a chance to get any sleep until about 2:30.  Everything has been running pretty smoothly since then, though, and I’ve managed to get a few hours’ sleep broken up by having to help Denine get unhooked from everything about every 45 minutes to go to the bathroom.

11:10 – The morning has been pretty routine.  The doctor started the Pitocin at around 8:00 and they’ve been increasing the dosage periodically since then; Denine’s contractions are getting longer and stronger, which is the norm.  We’ve got a new nurse now and we like her, so we are two for two in that regard.  Went over the birthing plan with her and the nursery staff.  The only issue we are having is that the nursery seems kind of reluctant to let her deliver to the belly and pretty much leave him alone for an hour or so until they have to give him the vitamin K and eye drops – assuming everything is fine, of course.  We’re standing our ground (read: I’m digging in my heels); it’s aggravating that the nursery nurse kept saying that they want us to have the experience we want, but she kept giving me excuses (read: not sound medical reasons) why she doesn’t want to do that.  Denine and I have been playing speed off and on all morning just to pass the time; she was winning for a while, but I think she’s starting to slow down.

13:15 – The doctor checked Denine at about 12:30 and she is still at 4cm and 50% effaced, which is about where she was before they started the Pitocin.  Kind of discouraging, but that’s about the same experience we’ve had in the past so it isn’t terribly surprising.  We were just hoping the whole process would be a bit faster this time around.  I took the opportunity after the doctor left to go and get some lunch, which was even more unappetizing than I usually find McDonald’s; I hate eating when I’m tense, and I hate leaving Denine in the hospital by herself.  Denine is watching TV and trying to relax now, hopefully she’ll progress some before the next exam.

17:00 – Still no progress as of the last exam at about 4:00.  Every time the nurse ups the dosage of Pitocin Denine will have a lot of contractions for a while and then they will die down again.  She has decided, after much discussion and debate, to go ahead and get an epidural and let the doctor break her water when she comes by next time, which should be in an hour or so.  We’re hoping that this will finally make her progress, since the Pit doesn’t seem to be doing much.  It’s also the one thing at this point that is significantly different from her other deliveries:  the doctor broke her water pretty early with Jamie, and she had a high tear before they induced with Ren.

19:00 – Denine’s epidural is in and her water is broken, here’s hoping that this will move things along a little more briskly now.  She’s sleeping now, so if we hold to the historical pattern she should make some progress.  Breaking her water did apparently get her an extra centimeter, so we’re officially at 5 and 50% now.  I went and choked down some food, since I had to leave during the epidural anyway; Quizno’s was a little more palatable than McDonald’s was earlier, but not by much. 

22:15 – As of the last exam Denine was at 4-5cm and 75% effaced, so no more dilated but significantly softer.  The doctor said she was happy to see that more than more dilation because that means she should dilate faster when the time comes.  They are basically saying it could be anytime now, but I’ve come to believe that’s just medical professionals’ way of trying to keep their patients optimistic.  Denine is at least sleeping pretty consistently now (between her half-hour position changes when they make her role over, quite a challenge when one can’t feel her lower body) and I took the chance to catch a quick shower.  Now I think I’ll watch some Netflix until I get tired enough to sleep in either the tiny fold-out couch/bed or the hard recliner.  Sometimes it really stinks being a night owl.

3-25-2011

00:45 – Rather a lot has happened since my last entry.  About fifteen minutes after that, the doctor came in to check Denine, and her exact words were “Are you ready to have a baby?  You’re complete!”  So about a half-hour of pushing and we were holding our new son, Asher Armstrong Lee Bailey, born at 11:02 p.m., 19 ¾ inches long, and weighing 8lbs, 5.8oz.  We had about an hour with him before they carted him off to get poked and prodded in the nursery, and now they just brought him back to us.  So, screw you guys, I’m gonna go play with my new baby!  J.

 Not even squeaky clean yet...

 17:05 – Today had been mostly slow with bursts of business.  I think everybody gets together and decides to come in at the same time; we seem to always have Denine’s nurse, the nursery nurse, and somebody needing paperwork filled out all in the room at once, or else some other combination.  Then they will all go away and we’re left to ourselves for an hour or so.  We’ve spent most of the day enjoying holding Asher, or trying to get him to nurse.  He’s not a pro yet but he’s getting the job done, he just seems more interested in suckling than eating most of the time.  Of course, he had his circumcision done this afternoon, so now he’s in kind of a gripey mood, relatively speaking; thus far he’s been a very laid back baby.

(I realize at this point that I neglected to put anything down about people visiting us in the hospital or our first day home; I'll have to catch up with that on the next post.  In the mean time, I do have pics!)

  

Going home!

 

Asher's first car ride.

3-31-2011

00:10 – Well, I thought I was done with this log, but here I find myself sitting in a hospital room again.  Asher had his first doctor’s appointment on Tuesday, and he was a little more jaundiced than she would like and she had us take him to get his bilirubin level checked.  The levels were also a little higher than she would like, so she had us come in again on Wednesday and get them checked again.  They called us around 8:30 Wednesday night and said his bilirubin level was 20.1, and that we needed to come into the hospital (Texas Children's in Katy) to give him photo therapy.  They just got started with that at around 11:30, so we could be looking at staying here until around midnight tomorrow.  Thus far Asher is not too happy about the whole situation, not that I can blame him; between having his heel pricked for the fifth times in about as many days of life and being stripped naked, blind-folded, and made to lie out in the open, I don’t think I’d be very happy either.  Despite the nurses’ reassurance that “the babies are really cozy under there once they calm down,” I’m not seeing it so far.

10:19 – The doctor came in a couple of hours ago and said that Asher’s bilirubin count has gone down enough to discharge him, they just had some routine blood tests left to do before we can go.  They’ve gotten the blood drawn for those and now we are just waiting on the results.  Hopefully we’ll be home by lunch time; God has faithfully fulfilled another set of prayers!

(FYI, we didn't make it home by lunch time, but at least the burgers in the TCHW Cafeteria are not too bad.)

The Waiting is the Hardest Part... Plus Final BB Pic (38 Weeks)

Well, the big day is almost nigh; we go in at 9:00 tonight to start Denine on prostaglandin.  If that doesn't kick start her labor, we will go ahead with the induction tomorrow morning.  So, God willing, by this time tomorrow our family will be one person bigger.....and Denine will be one person smaller (sorry, Honey, I couldn't resist).  I know I should probably be busy packing and getting ready to leave, but I think we are pretty well on top of things.  Plus, I'm in that state where I know there is something I meant to be doing, but darned if I can remember what it was.  As you can see from the post title, I decided to go ahead and grace you all with one last baby bump pic for the sake of completeness.  I have all of these pictures together in a separate folder on my computer, partly so I can resize them to be uploaded but also so that I can flip through them quickly in sequence.  Neither of us thought Denine had really gotten that much bigger since the last pic until we looked at them one after the other.  You don't really appreciate how much a pregnant woman's belly grows in so short a time when you're looking at it day-to-day.

It's like he's defying gravity...

In other news:  Jamie had another seizure on Friday, so he is back on medication for his epilepsy.  We are pretty discouraged about that, we had hoped that his epilepsy had gone away for good.  The older he gets, the less likely it is that it will ever go away, and once he hits puberty - which would be right about now - the chances decrease dramatically.  I believe statistically there's about an even chance at this stage, and if it hasn't gone away by his late teens the chances are slim that it ever will; we will just continue to pray that God will see fit to cure him, and deal with whatever happens.  Needless to say, the timing of his relapse stinks, particularly since somebody else will be taking care of him while we are at the hospital.  He should be fine now that he is back on medication (Denine was a basket case all weekend because we couldn't get a prescription until Monday), it's just that it is one more thing to worry about.  I had to write out instructions yesterday for my sister-in-law regarding what to do and not do if he has a seizure, what's normal behavior versus what to be concerned about, etc.  You take for granted the vast wealth of knowledge you have on your children's behavior until you have to explain all the nuances to someone else, particularly when there is an abnormal health issue at play.

Anywho, everyone cross your fingers and say a pray that everything goes well.  My next post should have my detailed account of the whole event, plus some baby pics (no bump!).  

I'm off to try and remember what it is I should be doing...

Time Creeps By... Plus New BB Pic (36 Weeks)

First things first:  The big news for this post is that we are officially scheduled to induce on the morning of the 24th!  To be honest, I have very mixed emotions about that.  On the one hand, I'm relieved to finally have an end date for the pregnancy set; it's a lot easier to sit around and wait when you know how long it's going to take.  On the other hand, I feel kind of like a hypocrite.  I am typically very vocal about my distaste for using unnecessary medical interventions, in particular the recent prevalence of performing elective c-sections for the sake of convenience.  Doing an elective induction is not quite in the same boat, but I feel like it might be in the same ocean; it's not an invasive surgery, but it is still something we are electing to do, though not necessarily for convenience as much as for impatience.  The doctor is comfortable with our decision to induce then -we're actually doing it a day earlier than we had requested so that it's not on the weekend- and we know from past experience that Denine's body seems to react well, if not a little over-enthusiastically, to pitocin.  So I'm not really worried about complications and feel good about the decision.  Just torn, I suppose.  There is still the possibility of Denine going into labor before then, which I am hoping will be the case; according to my mother babies are never born when they are planned, so by that reasoning we should be guaranteeing that he will be born beforehand.  Murphy never seems to work in ones favor, however...

 I've been getting progressively farther behind on the time between when I take the bump pics and when they actually get posted, so I'm due to take another one around Friday.  Assuming she hasn't popped by then, in which case you'll get a picture of the baby instead of the baby bump.

I'm planning to try and keep up with a blow-by-blow log of the labor and delivery that I can post after it's all said and done.  I have a written journal from when Jamie was born, and it's pretty neat to be able to go back and read what was happening and my thoughts at the time.  Ren's delivery is all just a blur now, we've got the pictures but I really wish I had written something down.

Denine had her first baby shower Saturday (well, not her first one ever, but the first one for Asher).  I am subsequently feeling better about what we have left to buy vs. the money we have left to buy it with.  We also have our "family shower" this weekend, although I am still not sure who exactly is supposed to be attending.  We see most of our family two or three times a week, so I assume that this shower is for some of the extended family, but every time as ask Mom about who is supposed to be coming I don't really get an answer.  Maybe she is just trying to surprise us.

I've spent the last two weekends cleaning up the garage, the first organizing what needed to go to the garage sale last week and then last weekend cleaning out all the refuse.  I know I threw out two suitcases, a steamer trunk, and three boxes of stuff that whoever owned the house before my brother had left in the garage rafters; a set of sliding shower doors and the rest of the scrapped walls from my shower demo; a back door; two non-working gas trimmer motors;  and an assortment of scrap wood that was not worth keeping any more.  I still have a pile of campfire wood I've been "holding onto" for my brother which he doesn't want anymore and a half-pallet of solidified bags of Quikrete that haven't made it to the curb yet.  Now, for the first time since we moved in over three years ago, I can finally fit a car in the garage!  Unfortunately, I still have a full-size van / mini-motor home parked in my driveway, which prevents me from actually making use of said space.  Step one has been completed, though, so there is hope that, someday, one of us will be able to park in a covered parking area for the first time.  Huzzah!

You Haul 5840 Tons, Whadaya Get...

I am officially another year older - though thankfully not deeper in debt - as of last Saturday, which is going down as my most disappointing birthday in memory.  I woke up Saturday morning to find Ren lying on the couch with a trashcan in front of her, never a good sign.  She had apparently gotten sick early that morning, and spent the entire day napping on the couch and hurling every time she tried to eat anything.  This, understandably, put Denine in a bad mood all day.  The highlight of the day was when Jamie and I spent the afternoon running errands and acquiring a rare Pokémon; I did discover that a game I've had my eye on went down in price to $20, so that's birthday-money-expenditure #1.  Friday night was our traditional birthday dinner with my parents at a relatively expensive, which was nice.  Denine couldn't resist the urge to tell the server that it was my birthday.  This netted us a free dessert, which I let Ren eat so that I could get tiramisu and illicit my mother’s annual questioning of why I love tiramisu when I hate coffee (FYI, I don't get it either).  And, no, I don't think the cake had anything to do with Ren getting sick, though in hindsight I am glad no one had to pay for it.  Sunday was a pretty standard "LTC practice and life group" Sunday.  So, the weekend as a whole wasn't bad, it was just that my actual birthday was disappointing.

We splurged and bought electronics for birthday / tax return presents this year.  She got a new laptop to replace her old one with a messed up screen (everything has a purple tint) and I got an iPod Touch to replace my Sansa Fuze+ (the touch screen is impossible to use in the car at night).  I am ashamed to say, I'm now an iPod junky; I never really cared about having a smart phone before, I don't even have texting on my phone, but this thing is making me really wish I had an iPhone.  Not that that is anywhere near in the cards, but I'm just sayin'...

In baby-related news:  The nursery is, insomuch as we are responsible, done!  One of the errands we ran Saturday was to buy some cord for curtain tie-backs, which I put up Tuesday, and I convinced Denine to finish scoring the quilt while we were out.  So, excluding the decorative things that Mom is working on (which we can't have until after the family shower she's doing) and getting the rest of the extraneous stuff out of the room (which won't happen until after our garage sale donations are picked up) we are officially finished.  

 Ignore the toys on the floor; our nephew decided to break in the nursery for Asher.

The crib quilt.  Design by me, execution by Denine.

This Saturday is the main baby shower, which we're kind of pumped about; it's like an extra Christmas!  We also had the first of the weekly doctor visits Tuesday, complete with regular pelvic exams; the official status is 1cm and 0% effaced - better than nothing, but I'm sure Denine was hoping for more with all the contractions she's been having.  The nurse told us that almost all their patients having been delivering two weeks early lately; it just dawned on me, that would be the week of spring break.

Okay everyone, pray/cross-fingers/whatever that Denine will go into labor sometime between the 11th and 18th of March.  I'm counting on you!

P.S.  Bonus points if you get the subject line...

Biding Time & New BB Pic (34 Weeks)

There hasn't been a lot to report in the last couple of weeks; I finally got the relatively calm time I've been hinting at for a while.  We got the crib put together and all the furniture put back where it belongs in the nursery two weekends ago, and Denine spent all day last Saturday finishing the crib skirt and curtains.  All that's left to do is the decorative touches.  And getting the rest of the stuff that's being stored in that room (primarily Ren's old box spring and a bunch of storage containers and boxes) put someplace else.  Unfortunately, I can't move that stuff anywhere until the garage is cleaned out somewhat, which won't happen until the stuff that we are donating gets picked up, and that probably won't until sometime the week-after-next.  Anywho, I'm to that point where I feel like we've been rushing to get everything done in time and now we are just sitting around waiting.  Not that we are going to be sitting around twiddling our thumbs - between my birthday, two baby showers, and miscellaneous other projects we should be plenty busy - it just that it seems like we've done everything we needed to get done beforehand and we're just stalling for time.  All of that said, we keep saying that we hope she will deliver around 37 weeks, which is apparently considered full term now (it was 36 when we had Ren).  So even for our "target date" we still have two+ weeks to go.

She's big (yeah, I got nuthin'...)

I feel bad for Denine, she's to that point where she can rarely get comfortable, and when she does she doesn't stay that way for long.  To make things worse, sort of, she's started having some pretty good contractions off and on.  I say "sort of" because she's having more and stronger contractions than she did with her other pregnancies, so hopefully that bodes well for her chances of going into labor naturally this time around and staying away from the evil "P-word."  Everyone keeps assuring her that there's no way she'll make it forty weeks judging by how big her belly is and the contractions she's having.  I hope they're right, but only time will tell.  After Friday I'm going to start encouraging her to do pelvic stretches (the birthing class instructor said not to until 35 weeks) and walking more, anything that might help things along.

Oh The Weather Outside... Plus New BB Pic (31 Weeks)

We have officially survived the Arctic Blast of '11.  I feel like kind of a wimp even acknowledging that it was a big deal, given that I grew up in an area that generally froze at least once a year.  Heck, literally the first day I had my driver's license the roads were frozen over and I still drove to school, albeit with my dad following close behind.  However, the fact remains that Houston is ill-prepared to deal with freezing weather - as evidenced by the fact that the city pretty much completely shut down on Friday.  I heard on the radio this morning that there were over 800 traffic accidents between Thursday night and Friday night, which I guess isn't horrible out of 2 million plus people, but that's still a lot of accidents.  I myself spent the day getting things done around the house, primarily putting the last coat of paint on the nursery and bathing the dogs.  The latter been put off for quite a while because it is usually Denine's job but she has been somewhat unable to do it of late, what with the large belly in the way.  The nursery should start coming together now that it doesn't look like it is under construction anymore.  We got a curtain rod and what we need to repaint the window sill Sunday, Mom is supposed to be bringing the crib and various decor over this weekend, and the quilt is assembled (though it still needs to be scored and washed repeatedly to give it the "rag quilt" look); all we lack are the curtains and a dust ruffle, which may or may not get done this week.  Hopefully by this time next week everything will be done and it will actually look like a nursery.  Then we can just sit back and wait for Asher to arrive (yeah, right).

All painted and ready for decorating.  The room is much darker now...

Our birthing class started this past Wednesday.  We were in the class with two other couples, both first timers, and this week was spent going over natural birthing techniques.  It was interesting going through the material effectively as the wizened old couple, since we've done this twice before, and watching the reactions of the other couples while we watched the video that goes step-by-step through the labor and delivery.  It took me back to being the confident and naive young husband, diligently studying up on what I needed to know so I could take charge of the situation when the time came.  Now I know better:  I'm just along for the ride and hope I can keep up.  We're praying that this time around there won't be any pitocin involved in the delivery and we can actually put some of these techniques to use; it would be nice to actually have the experience of labor progressing naturally for once.

The latest doctor report is still in the category of "no news is good news," everything is normal and we're just biding time and getting bigger at this point.  Denine is definitely getting antsy; we are officially praying for a 37 week delivery.  Although if the past has taught us anything, it's that it'll happen when it happens, and we'd rather wait than try to force the issue (see above).

Not quite ready to pop yet.

It never ceases to amaze me the amount of stuff there is to buy for a baby.  Not the amount that you need, just what all there is that can be bought.  Denine was going through the obligatory bag of pamphlets and whatnot that we got at birthing class, and one of them had a checklist for your baby registry.  I swear, nine out of ten items fell under "didn't register it and don't want it," and a few times we actually busted out laughing after she read something.  Granted, we are being deliberately minimalist this time around, and the list was being published by a company that sells baby items and was naturally at the other end of the spectrum, but some of the things out there that people think are necessities are ridiculous.  The biggest single expenditure we have is diapers, and that's only because we are choosing to eat the expense up front with a diapering system instead of paying as we go with  disposables.  If you took all of the diapering-system-related things off of our registries, i think we could probably outfit ourselves for well under $500.  Again, there are a lot of things that we are foregoing because we either didn't use it before or figure we can live without it, and we've been fervently acquiring hand-me-downs (having a two-year-old nephew has helped greatly in that regard), but there's just so much stuff out there.  Maybe it's just because I'm going through this process after becoming a "Dave Ramsey convert" that's making me realize the consumerism angle of the baby industry.

It's official:  I'm a jaded capitalist now.

We do, however, need to register a monitor...