Thanks, Booms Family (and other Bad-Axers)!

I found a package on our porch this afternoon with a great surprise - a "baby shower in a box" sent by Deb!  The scrapbook with notes from everyone was a great idea, and it'll be a good place to add photos, birth info, and all of the other baby stuff that will be appearing soon...  Thanks, everyone!

Hopefully, by the time I post again we'll have some photos of the babe himself...  I'm getting a bit impatient...

Things I'm not crabby about...

Since pregnancy has put me in a bad mood about just about everything lately, I'm starting a list of things that are making me happy...

1.  When I ran to the grocery store this morning, the cashier said something about how tiny I look.  It's a little thing, but it'll keep me going all day.  And from the front and back, it's true:

It's only from the side that you can really tell how huge I am:

2.  Friday was my last day of work before maternity leave; I'm scheduled to be back on August 25.  That means that I'm really close, and it also means that I have a bit of time (somewhere between two days and two weeks) to get things done and relax before the babe arrives.  

3.  It also means that I'm able to put two of my maternity shirts away, and I won't have to look at them again for a long, long time.  I know that I need to keep a lot of my maternity clothes out for a while, because there's no way I'll fit into most of my old clothes right away (I was phasing those out at three months pregnant)... but these long-sleeved, almost-too-tight work shirts that I won't be able to use while nursing are going straight to the back of the closet.  Yippee!  

(Incidentally, some of the best advice I received was to find maternity clothes that made me feel good.  I invested in a week's wardrobe when I found a great sale back in early winter, and I've been happy wearing it ever since... and the dresses and t-shirts will even last into the summer.  Yes, I'm ready to give the rest away... but I'm pretty happy that I lasted this long.)

4.  This book, a gift from Anna, which has been sitting on the coffee table along with a stack of baby books and the blanket that I've been working on, which may or may not get done.  (Heck, it's summer - right now I feel like there's not much of a rush.)  It makes me smile every time I look at it.

5.  The Detroit Red Wings, because the Stanley Cup is the first thing that's gotten me to leave the house in the evening in a long time.  We'll see if the new Indiana Jones movie can do it as well.

6.  Earl, who is getting up early to feed the animals so I can sleep in, picking up dinner without complaining when I'm too tired to cook, giving me back rubs whenever I ask, and only occasionally telling me that I'm scary.

At least according to the hospital, we're in pretty good shape to have this kid.

1.  I started receiving email updates from the hospital, and we have almost everything that's on their "what you really need to have a newborn around" checklist.  And it's even put away!  Check out the current status of the baby's room - cute, no?

2.  I signed a contract with the hospital's doula program last week, and I'm supposed to call my "recommended doula" tomorrow to set up a first meeting.  They have a list of doulas and a matching program, and if I don't like this person, they'll set me up with someone else.  I feel good about this, and I've only heard positive things from the people I know.  (Plus, it helps that they're so common and relatively "normal" here in Santa Fe, so I trust that I'll find someone that's not too wacky.  I know that's not the case everywhere.)

3.  We're officially done with childbirth classes.  Actually, we skipped the last class after the teacher went on an anti-vaccination rant last week, but I feel like we learned everything the class could teach us.  With all of the books, movies, and websites that have been thrown at me, I feel pretty well-informed and laid-back about the whole thing... nothing to worry about now until the babe gets here!  (And when that happens, I doubt that a few skipped childbirth classes are going to make much of a difference.)