The dresser escapade

We just finished filling up a new (to us) dresser with baby stuff - diapers, clothes, blankets, shoes that look like lions, the whole nine yards. It was quite the interesting time, going from no dresser at all, to a dresser filled with stuff...

We figured we'd go looking for a used dresser at the thrift shops, and find something that suited us that would hold a schwack (technical term for a plethora) of baby gear. We found a couple dressers at the store below us, but they were priced pretty darn low, and for pretty good reason - one was generally beat up and mangy, and the other was from Ikea. Like someone later told us, Ikea can sometimes be fine the first time around, but on its second life, it's usually just on the verge of collapse, if not well past that point. So we decided to think about it, and carry on to the next store, where we found a couple good solid dressers, solid wood, good drawer openage, all that - but a bit pricier than the first store. (Still not at all bad, though.) We hummed and hawed and finally decided on one of these nice dressers - but had no way of getting it home. The co-op truck nearby was booked, so we booked a car for later in the day - little did we realize how barely wrong-sized that car would turn out to be. (That's called "blatant foreshadowing".)

Anyway, on the way home, we walked by that first store - which had kindly decided to place a new dresser in their sidewalk display - a beautiful looking dresser with cute little-kid plastic numbers as drawer handles. The clouds parted, the light shone upon it, and lo, Holly's eyes did tear up. With a curse to the thrift store gods, I hustled her on past, up to our apartment. (This turned out okay the next day, when I went to inspect the dresser, and found it to be of extremely dubious quality. Phew.)

Where was I? Right. The car. I picked up the car, drove to the store, and found that the dresser was approximately an inch from fitting into the car, no matter where in the car I tried to put it, no matter how I swivelled it. (And I'm a world-champion car-fitter-in-er, I once got a boxspring into the back of a canopy truck that was a good 6 inches too small for it - the trick is to bend time and space with your mind.) So, I had to leave it there, return the car, and return at lunch the next day with the co-op truck. That worked. The dresser was in our place!

And just now, we jammed it full of stuff - I'm still a bit fuzzy on how we actually got this much stuff - we only bought one onesie and a package of diapers ourselves, as far as I remember. We certainly have generous family and friends. Thanks, all!

Baby pool almost closed

Two more days to enter the baby pool... Wednesday is your last day to enter, then we're shutting it down! We're hoping for at least three more entries in that time, to set an all-time Broadland baby pool high of 50 entries. We really should have been charging the big bucks to enter, we could have a decent start on a college fund by now... :)

Baby pool entries are flooding in!

Wow! What a response! We're up to 32 entries, a mere day after sending out the invitation. Odds are pretty strong that someone will guess the correct birthday, and we'll have to think up some kind of prize. Besides getting to name the baby, obviously. That prize goes without saying. ;)

I'm also very impressed with the variety of names (both real and silly) that have been suggested so far. I think the front-runner so far, at least in my mind, is "Dynamite Danger Broadland the 1st". Right on!

If you haven't cast your ballot yet, don't be late! The prize we'll think up will be so good that you won't want to miss your chance at it!

Oh, and if you want to see who has entered and what they guessed, check out the pool. (You can click people's names in the calendar at the bottom to get details.) Also, we'll be putting together some bar graphs and pie charts, just as soon as I remember what exactly a standard deviation is.

Enter the baby pool!

When do you think our little one will arrive? Dean has put together an online baby pool so you can guess the birth date. As of tomorrow, we're only three weeks away from the estimated due date of March 28th, 2007! Head over to www.immaturity.ca/baby to cast your vote before March 14th.

Trial run

We were out at a birth information session tonight and on our way home decided to time the drive between our place and the hospital. It was 9pm and traffic was light and we made the trip in a very quick 10 minutes! Good to know!

Other trial runs lately have included setting up the car seat in our parents' vehicles, putting a cloth diaper on a stuffed animal and trying out the baby carrier with said stuffed animal in it.

Due dates

I'm starting to get the idea that this baby is going to be here very soon. I'm 34 weeks and 3 days pregnant and the baby's March 28th due date is less than six weeks away. This really sunk in today when I was paying some bills and realized that our next VISA bill will be due on March 28th! We're one payment cycle from being parents! Better get back to ordering Dean around as he rearranges our home in preparation for Slipper's arrival.

Update on Slipper

Things continue to progress nicely. All signs point to the baby being healthy, Holly continues to get rounder and more prone to waddling, and the kicks have started to settle down into a more sedate rolling/stretching kind of motion. Very good. At the last midwives' appointment, I was able to hear Slipper's heartbeat via a wooden thingamawhatsis that might be called a fetuscope. No electronic gadgetry required! Hooray! Also, the midwives said that Slipper has his/her head down now, which is a good thing, as I understand things. As Slipper gets bigger, Slipper's accomodations get smaller, so turning around is less and less of an option, so the sooner we can get the baby pointed the right direction, the better.

I just took a few moments out from writing this to go watch Slipper's stretching antics. And now it looks like Slipper has the hiccups - possibly because I'm playing the Peter Gunn theme, and Slipper got so excited that hiccups were the result. This kid gets the hiccups fairly often - takes after Mommy, I guess.

That's all for now. Stay tuned!