I swear I really will post photos of the trip. I’m just too lazy to fight iphoto any more tonight. (It makes me cranky; just ask the spouse.) But on a life update (since I’ve already posted a photo update and a reading list update): tomorrow we start our child birthing class. This is good because one of the next tasks for doctor visits is to put together a birth plan and I’m hoping the class will help me pull that together a little better. It’s all well and good that it’s “better” not to have drugs during labor, but I really hate pain. Have I mentioned I’m not looking forward to hours of labor? I’m mostly used to getting fatter every day (at least I look pregnant now instead of just fat), and I’ll be very with the end result of the months of sickness and forced clothes shopping (really irks me to spend money on clothes I’ll only wear for a few months total) but I’m not looking forward to the pain of childbirth.?

OK, enough whining. On the financial side of life, the hot tub continues to cost money: impellers and pumps (???) had to be completely reworked. And the financial sector of the market is desperately seeking capital. Although that means my 401(k) and IRA have tanked this month, it also means that Washington Mutual (now JP Morgan Chase) is offering a 12-month CD with 5% APY. Yes, I dropped a reasonable sum of emergency fund money into a CD. (The majority is still staying in the very liquid 3% earning online savings account though.) FIve percent is almost keeping pace with inflation. Hurrah for at least not actively losing money to inflation!

And we watched the debate last Friday night. Not sure if I’ll watch the vice-presidential candidates this week, but I hope I can watch it online at some point. I’m still trying to get into the mothers-to-be aquatics class at the YMCA. They didn’t post their fall schedule online (still summer online apparently) and so I didn’t realize the class had started already until a co-worker said she was in it and I should join. But when I called today, the worker at the front desk said I couldn’t join because the class had already started. My co-worker was going to talk to the instructor at tonight’s class to see if there’s room for one more in the class, and if so, I’ll be swimming on Thursday instead of watching Palin and Biden fight it out.

And the new season of Chuck has started. Yeah for online television watching.

Rambling finished.?

Finished:?Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child?by Marc Weissbluth: I’d skip this one. The author is very concerned with schedules (not necessarily feeding the baby every so many hours only, but rather with “this is the correct way to do it because I said so” schedule for everything else to do with the baby). And he contradicts himself from chapter to chapter. He spends part of the time seeming to push for attachment-style parenting, then the other part of the time lambasting Dr. Sears, the father of attachment parenting. Too much data discussion too. (I get it: you’re a sleep researcher, but I don’t want to read a scientific paper.) And he thinks it important to supplement breastfeeding daily with a bottle of expressed milk or formula. (Why??? Just so the mother can have an hour off and the father can hold the baby for that hour? Not a strong enough argument for all the bottle washing for me.) Read the NAPS book and skip this one.?

La Leche League International?The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding: This one was good; more detailed than Breastfeeding Made Simple, or maybe I just comprehended more after already reading one book on breastfeeding. Too rah! rah! for LLL but obviously, it’s an LLL book, so what do you expect? (I’m not anti-LLL, but there is no chapter anywhere near here; the T-C chapter is basically defunct. It’s great and all, but it is not ubiquitous.)

The Ultimate Breastfeeding Booking of Answers?by Jack Newman, M.D. and Teresa Pitman: OK, but if I had to choose, I’d go with one of the first two books I read. Newman is a big LLL guy but he blathers a bit. And I was feeling repeat after reading the other two books very recently.

Currently reading:?

Your Pregnancy week by week?by Glade Curtis and Judith Schuler (ongoing)

The Official Lamaze Guide: Giving Birth with Confidence

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling: OK, so this isn’t a child preparation book, but I started reading the series again when I was in Minnesota. Finished the first book, and am a third of the way through the second. Maybe I can get through the series again before the next movie comes out. Maybe.

Still to read The Thinking Woman?s Guide to a Better Birth?by Henci Goer

The list is getting short (though my stack of books to return to people from whom I have borrowed them is getting longer). Any suggestions for other books?

A bump picture is overdue, and this one has been sitting on my desktop for two weeks, waiting for me to post it. So here it is. And tomorrow (maybe) we’ll do a more current picture. For the record, iphoto makes me cranky.

From the land of the M to the land of the W I have returned. I have pictures and peanut butter and as soon as I finish catching up on the laundry and the balancing of bank statements, I will post said pictures. (And as soon as I stop spending the rest of my evening reading every news article on the $700B bailout and the presidential candidates instead of doing other useful things.)

Kicked my own butt for procrastinating on the baby research reading list. (I got a little sidetracked when my local book pusher lent me Breaking Dawn?and I’m ever so grateful she did.) Then I set to work reading.

Finished:?The 90-Minute Baby Sleep Program?by Polly Moore:?(OK, I finished this one a while ago.)?Very much enjoyed this one on the NAPS system. I recommend it. All about our bodies’ natural rhythms and best way to work with those for proper sleep for the baby.

Breastfeeding Made Simple?by Nancy Mohrbacker and Kathleen Kendall-Tackett: Also enjoyed this one on the seven natural laws for nursing mothers.

Emotional Intelligence?by Daniel Goldeman: Skimmed a few chapters and gave up. Too dense.

Mommy Guilt: skimmed / read. It was a quick read. A bit too transparent, but then I’m probably rationalizing the concept of mommy guilt. We’ll see how I fare when I get there.

The Attachment Parenting Book?by William and Martha Sears: enjoyed this one as well. I think I started reading one of their pregnancy month by month type books and abandoned it, but I enjoyed this one. The spouse even read the chapter on attachment fathering.?

Currently reading:?Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child?by Marc Weissbluth

Your Pregnancy week by week?by Glade Curtis and Judith Schuler (ongoing)

Still to read The Official Lamaze Guide: Giving Birth with Confidence

The Thinking Woman?s Guide to a Better Birth?by Henci Goer

La Leche League International The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding?

The Ultimate Breastfeeding Booking of Answers by Jack Newman, M.D. and Teresa Pitman

And, next week, I can multitask by reading books on a plane . . . only six more days until I ditch the spouse for some girl time with the goddess?who just past her oral exams. Hurrah!

Number of 0-3 month onesies currently residing in the dresser. I broke down and counted them. It was under my original estimate of 75. At five changes per day, that’s 13.4 days we could go without doing laundry. The bigger question: would you really want to do that much laundry on day 13?

I am currently doing the third of five-ish loads of laundry of newly acquired baby clothes. One of my co-workers had a baby girl a couple of months ago and she passed on a box full of newborn to six month clothes. Then, Burtmiah and his lovely wife gave us two huge bins of clothes from 0-6 months (and hats and socks and shoes and blankets) as well. I am currently a little overwhelmed with where I’m going to put all these clothes. Having a girl was the right thing to do it appears: we’re getting all the like-new hand-me-downs from everyone else who has had girls. And it’s awesome.

Also, picked up a mattress and mattress cover for the crib, so now I just need to pick out some sheets and get the breathable bumpers E. recommended and we’re completely crib ready. Percy is quite interested in the crib now that there’s a mattress in it. The spouse was having to chase her out of the bassinet already (she kept jumping in it and he’d pick her back up, set her down and she’d jump back in it; maybe she thought it was a game). We’ll see who wins that little battle. She may find herself locked out of the nursery until she learns which soft surfaces are off-limits.

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Bump is now more like huge-ish round thing sticking out of the vicinity of my mid-section. At least it feels that way in the middle of the night when I roll over and there’s so much more of me to roll. Have I mentioned it still weirds me out to feel the baby kicking (or moving or whatever it is she’s doing hanging out in there). Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting at my desk, working, and she decided to give me the muscle spasm movement feeling off and on all afternoon. I tried sitting up straighter, leaning back, leaning forward, getting up and walking around: didn’t make a difference. I guess she was just being vocal about liking the cardamom gelato I had at lunch.?

For the labor day weekend, we traipsed to Seattle, the spouse with a carload of nerds to attend Penny Arcade Expo, I with a carload of cool people to hang out with said nerds who attended PAX. We stayed at my mother’s new apartment (the guys got the floor; she and I shared the one bed) and I got to visit the Apple store. I never buy anything new, but I like visiting. Also got to show Langster the Lego store (OK, so I didn’t actually go in, but he did, and he liked it) and show M.C. a bit of the ritzy Bellevue mall as well as Nordstrom Rack. Alas, there were no flat shoes for the pregnant lady. It was my most disappointing Rack shoe experience. Why do they all have to have ridiculous heels?

The explicit purpose of my trip was to visit a store that carries cloth diapers so that I could hit up the salesperson for advice and touch the diapers in person. One store I visited Sunday (with the mother in tow) was a disappointment: they had one package of Kushies and no advice. The second store, which I was more hopeful about, was excellent. (And I give M.C. props for feigning interest for at least 10 minutes before heading off for the plant nursery we’d passed on the way to the baby store.) The clerk suggested I attend their upcoming cloth diapering class (it would be a bit of a commute though) and walked me through prefolds versus all-in-ones, what needs diaper covers, dry pail versus wet pail, etc. She was very helpful and I bought a couple of diaper options there as well as a?Kiddopottamus size large (have a size small thanks to M & E) for swaddling. Here are two of my purchases.

Also got some good mediterranean food that night with the C’s and the mother before practically falling asleep in the car on the way back to the apartment.

Monday we headed home to console the cat, who was quite concerned that we had not been home Sunday to give her wet food on the prescribed day. Incidentally, she really does like me best now. She sleeps curled up next to me every night?sometimes literally all night?and doesn’t even abandon my side of the bed when I get up and the spouse is still lazing about waiting for the snooze button. I can’t feel too smug though; I think the only reason is that my general body temperature is higher now so she likes being snuggled up with me.

Got to play some Caylus Magna Carta on Monday evening, but I’m still up for some Puerto Rico and Power Grid.