With three weeks left to go it has finally hit me that this little boy may actually, really and truly be coming.
Christmas was difficult this year, I kept looking at our stockings and thinking that we were a man down--well a girl down actually, and pondering the fact that this should have been Katharine's first Christmas but instead I was carrying this new little miracle under my heart. Although I've been trying to prepare for him I couldn't quite believe that he was really on his way. That in turn of course led to a slight post-Christmas panic over the fact that other than setting up the crib and bassinet, I hadn't actually made anything ready for his upcoming arrival--the baby clothes were unwashed and not a newborn diaper was to be found in the house--just kidding, we never have newborn diapers in the house, have you seen the size of my babies?
Hopefully this little one isn't trying to top his brothers or he'll be pushing eleven pounds. I'm already down to three shirts that actually cover this ridiculousness. I think in the past when I got to this point I just alternated my two summer maternity dresses and hoped no one noticed....and although this is only
Florida winter as my lovely husband is prone to say, it's still nippy enough not to bust out the August maternity wear.....hopefully these last few shirts will continue to hold or I'll have to start pretending my one winter dress is a tunic that looks
really stylish over jeans.
Here's me at almost 37 weeks.....
The boys are really excited about John Michael's impending arrival and David kindly asked me last week if I would just lie down on my bed all day and see if I could get him to "pop out." He's also getting more and more curious about how my belly button is going to recover once his brother explodes out of it and I have a feeling he's starting to doubt my increasingly evasive answers......
Don't worry, in between bouts of couch resting to catch my breath I've been busy with my preparations (all the baby clothes are freshly laundered and folded) and Chris, dutiful husband that he is, has been plugging away at my honey-do list including turning the dresser that resides in the baby's closet from red to white. A task that I know he
really did not want to take on, mostly because no one
else sees that it doesn't match the room since, you know--
it's in the closet. In the end he understood that it was important because I on the other hand knew it was in there, laughing at me with it's mismatched paint, daring me to do something about it.......or maybe he was worried that if he didn't paint it for me he was liable to come home from work to find that I had gotten out the dolly and moved it into the garage to paint it myself......
He also mounted our giant wall map to a piece of wood and framed it out with some molding--it looks just like it did at our old house but now it's movable as opposed to stapled to the wall :)
Now the baby's/guest room is officially done, and by done I mean hod-podged together mostly from things we already had that all came together as if it had always been meant to be.....
.........with the exception of these pillows I found on sale at Target and this cute little frog I found on Etsy. He just reminded me of Florida and all the little frogs that cover our home in warmer weather--it seemed nicer than an ode to the cockroaches or swarms of mosquitoes that also cover our home.....
The main focus of my baby prep energies over the last week however has been this.......
Oh yes I did :) I've actually made my dreams come true and finished my very first quilt completely from
instructions I found on the internet
and it isn't a disaster. I even hand quilted the whole thing--granted the hand quilting mostly looks like a child did it, but towards the edges I started to get pretty good at it if I do say so myself! The whole back is made from the old duvet we inherited from uncle Nick and aunt Elizabeth long ago, some pieces are from daddy's shirts, and some pieces are from daddy's underpants--I won't tell little John his quilt is made from old underthings if you don't :)
Now, I really should look into buying some diapers.......
, by Rex Forehand 
,by Sigrid Undset