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...