any last words of advice?

So, last week some of the fine folks at Cranium took an hour out of their insane schedules to eat cupcakes and design some onesies for us (close to two-dozen in all). I got to make a couple, too. It was very nice of them to do, so many thanks to the cool cats on the Creative team. Oh, they gave us a Baby Bjorn, too, so now we have three of them (because Rob and Michelle loaned us two). Maybe I'll carry the dog around in one ...



I took pictures with our spiffy new digital video/still camera. I took them in the kid's room for which we bought a very cute new ceiling fixture that looks like the sun. It's very cute as long as you don't turn the light on. If you turn the light on the whole room is bathed in a sickly yellow glow. Alas. But I learned how to wire a light fixture in the process (thanks, again, to Rob who not only has a truck and isn't afraid to lift heavy things, but is also a crackerjack electrician).

So here we are with less than three weeks to the due date. Mimi is packing "the suitcase." Things are starting to fall into place around the house. I'm still not convinced that Trixie has any idea Mimi is pregnant. (Despite what people say about dogs "knowing" things, and despite there being no sweeter dog in the whole wide world, our dear pup isn't always the keenest observer of things.)

We are down to weekly OB visits now (we like our OB and we've decided he's a ballroom dancer in his spare time). Mimi has been introduced to the wonderfulness that is the pelvic exam. Our mantra for the last two weeks has been, "This is your bladder, this is the head, this is your bladder, this is the head." Apparently Flippy is riding really low and using Mimi's bladder as a pillow. Neat. If you've ever read All Creatures Great and Small there's a scene where the vet is delivering a calf, but the calf is facing the wrong way so the vet has to stick his whole arm inside the mother cow to turn the calf around. That was what I thought of during our last visit. Maybe it's not actually in that book, but it got in my head somehow ...

So, things are moving right along. Mimi is about 1.5 centimeters dilated and 80% effaced (translation: good!). Kid is head down and getting ready to go. We've been fortunate lately to spend time with some friends who have kids. It has been very reassuring. Though they all have similar stories of being impossibly tired in the early going, they have all settled into good rhythms with their little ones and each and every one of them seems really, really happy. Mimi was talking with one of the moms at the theater this afternoon about labor and delivery. This mom said the best thing anyone said to her (so she wanted to share it with Mimi) was when her mother-in-law told her, "This is doable." It's always nice to be reminded.