The girl I sat next to at Prepared Childbirth class on Monday night is certainly prepared– she told me she’d washed 14 loads of baby clothes over the weekend and got everything all organized for her baby who is due Jan 1st.  Um, I have done none of that.  Poor Sheils has tried countless times over her last few trips here to help me move all my clothes out from the closet that will soon be Baboo’s and each time I was like, “Eh…it’ll get done.”  Will nesting ever kick in?  Will I ever get over my general sense of laziness?   I’m not sure.  As much as we’d love Baboo to come in December, I hope he doesn’t come too early or he’ll have to wear my clothes.

Not much going on here this week.  I took an official sick day on Tuesday and spent the entire day on the couch which was nice.  I finally watched Terms of Endearment, which I had Netflixed since I felt as though it’s one of those movies one should see.  I also perused our own very paltry DVD collection and decided it’s always a good day to watch Dave.  So I did that, too.    I read 3 magazines (balancing In Touch Weekly with Newsweek, thank you very much!)  I finished the book I’ve been reading which I found fascinating and already sent Karen to her local NJ library to check it out.  It’s called The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids.   I’m not sure whether our society has just gone nuts in the last 10-15 years and high school pressure to succeed really has gotten out of control or what, but I considered myself to be about as competitive and driven academically in high school as one could be and it was nothing compared to what these kids in 2005 were facing.  Interestingly, the students are all from a high school in Montgomery County….the same schoool that many of you saw Seth’s team beat for his last game!   Anyway, I am very thankful that, for all the work I did and stress I put on myself to succeed academically in high school, I didn’t regularly stay up all night doing homework.   Crazy.

Speaking of football, it’s old news by now but the Varsity Stormin’ Warriors did get knocked out of the playoffs this past Friday night.  My parents went to the game to cheer them on (too cold for me!) but alas, it was to no end.  So no game at Ravens Stadium for Sherwood this year.   Of course, Indoor Track had already started so Seth has already jumped into that.  There’s just never a break!

I have noticed several similarities between Ethan and my cat, Bagel.  In a way, I think all babies and cats share many qualities.

* They are soft and cute

* They will sleep anywhere, for a majority of their day

* They will sleep in cribs (one of Bagel’s favorite sleeping spots is in the blanket drawer underneath Ethan’s crib)

* All they do is eat, sleep, and poop with a few alert moments during the day when they like to play

* They’re moody, acting sweet one moment and then thrashing out the next

* We would never eat the food they do, but they seem to love it

* They are entertained by simple things

* We can’t resist holding them

So I ended up having a fun little unexpected adventure at the doctor’s office this morning.  After experiencing some uncommon intestinal distress over the weekend, I started paying attention to the muscular goings-on in my belly area and realized that I seemed to be getting quite tight on a fairly regular basis.  These two things coupled together appear on lists of “preterm labor warning signs” so I figured I’d finally slip into the persona of the overanxious preggo and check in with the experts.  (it’s been over 34 weeks– that’s pretty good, right??!)  After reporting my symptoms to an advice nurse, I got a call back that they’d “double-booked” me into an appt with my doctor at 8:30 this morning.  Off I went.

After the doctor confirmed that I was not at all dilated, I ended up being strapped to a fetal monitor machine and watched for awhile where it was determined that, thankfully, any tightness was not due to actual contractions.  The machine’s output got far more interesting when I stood up–which is what I’d been noticing at home–but apparently that’s due simply to Baboo rearranging himself in a new position based on me being vertical and the lack of space in there could be construed as tightness.  The intestinal distress is a whole other issue for which I’m supposed to take it easy this week to get back on the mend there, but appears to have nothing to do with preterm labor.  So that’s good news!

It’s so great to have expert friends– Gen sat next to us in church yesterday so I could pounce on her with my symptoms since she’s a Labor and Delivery nurse.  She admonished me to go home and drink 3 liters of water and just rest, which I totally did and greatly enjoyed my 10 hours of TV watching and reading!!  I imagine there will be plenty more of that in my future.

Oh– as for the title of this entry.  Poor Seth has been putting up with my, “do you think this is something bad?  should I call the doctor?  But what if…??” for several days now and, per his usual laidback demeanor, has assured me that everything is okay.  He mentioned last night that he couldn’t help but think of the Friends episode where Ross blows off Rachel’s complaints of contractions but Joey rushes her to the hospital, where even though they’re diagnosed as Braxton-Hicks, the doctor praises him for taking action.  So yeah, Seth is more of a Ross.  But in the grand scheme of things,  someone who is less prone to panic is exactly what I need for balance! 

Traveling along with Nicki and Geoff from LA was Keswick, the leisure gnome.  Keswick is a bit of a troublemaker and always seems to end up posing for pictures in interesting locations.  Yesterday, we found him in the pumpkin cupcakes, and in the bowl of clementines.  (He also managed to score a pic sitting on his Auntie Em’s big belly, but the evidence of that was destroyed.)

After a wonderful Thanksgiving meal that stretched into hours of game-playing (and yes, Geoff did beat a team of 6 of us at Trivial Pursuit, although to be fair, we had accumulated 4 pie pieces at the time of his victory), we discovered that this morning was CHRISTMAS!!  Since this is the first year in who knows how many that we will not all be together at some point over the holidays, my parents (shown below holding the 2 turkeys we didn’t eat yesterday) brought Christmas to us in the form of stockings.  So we put on some Christmas tunes and pretended it was yuletide.  As you can see, Seth is very excited about Baboo’s future costume opportunities– how could we resist buying them when they’d been marked down to $6!!!??

Howdy, all. Geoff here, sitting in for a day as a guest writer. I’m not getting paid for this so I don’t think I’m violating the strike.

 After a home-cooked dinner of Emily’s famous tamale pie last night, we hit Chick Fil A today since it’s something we don’t have in LA. As Em and I walked in, a very assertive woman stopped us. “Oo-ee,” she said, “when are you due, when are you due?” “Six weeks or so,” Emily replied. The woman’s face scrunched up like a Hajjar-ian (that’s for you, AKH) prune. “Don’t think you’re gonna make it that long, honey. You’re about ready to blow!”

 Is the woman right? See the latest pic, taken this afternoon at 34 weeks, and judge for yourself.

Quick pictorial recap of our respective wedding weekends.  I’m getting ready to head to the airport to pick up Seth after what I know was a wonderful trip to Texas, but because of my fabulous father-in-law, I already have a few pics to post from those festivities.  So here’s what was going down in Austin this weekend:

Here, we have the 4 Kenton siblings with their loving maternal unit!  From left to right, we have Sarah, Matthew, Mamakins (or Becky as she is known to me!), Adam the groom, and Seth wearing suspenders for I’m sure the first time in his life!

And here, we have Big D with his newest daughter-in-law, the beautiful bride, Sara.  Man, is this guy lucky to have such AWESOME daughters-in-law!! 

So what’s really crazy is that while they were all celebrating a wedding Central Texas-style, my parents and I were at a wedding in DC where we spent the reception sharing a meal with the US Congressman from Seth’s family’s district in the Austin area!  How weird is that?  I was so pleased to be able to attend the wedding of Kirk and Betsy, Kirk being the younger brother of my friend Karen.  I grew up with Kirk and Karen and it was so special to see Kirk so happy on his wedding day!   Incidentally, Kirk and Betsy both work on the Hill which explains the presence of not only the Congressman from Texas, but also a Congresswoman from Pennsylvania!

Grabbing a quick pic with Karen at the reception:

Yay for newly formed marriages!!   Best wishes for many happy years to both couples!!

  (disclaimer– this pic is from last Christmas)

A Moore family legend has perpetuated for some time now that, in this day of scientific breakthroughs, probably isn’t all that amazing but is still very central to our family core.  I am referring, of course, to the fact that my brother and I are convinced that we are actually identical twins (just go with it, okay) who were “thawed” 3 years apart.  Geoff(rey) is my ultimate other half, from the days we swapped Garbage Pail Kids and strived to beat the record in Pitfall on Atari to the days growing up in Corning when I’d sneak into his room through our 2-way closet and startle him with nonsense sayings.  

As many of you may know, he lives in LA and is a member of the Writers Guild and is, therefore, participating in the current strike.  All guild members are expected to picket 20 hours/week, and it sounds to me like he’s been interacting with some very interesting people (like Ed Helms from The Office) even if it’s like pulling teeth to get him to tell me, the celebrity-hound, any of this.   I was just telling someone earlier this week about another of Geoff’s claims to fame, which is that he appeared (and beat the other contestants) on Win Ben Stein’s Money in 2002.  He is, in fact, something of a trivia marvel– he used to play Trivial Pursuit alone against teams of 10-15 people and still beat them.  It was insane.

Anyway, as the holidays approach, I can do nothing but get excited about spending time with my brother (and his wife, Nicki).  Although the family hurrah gets started later today with my parents’ arrival, Geoff’s arrival on Tuesday evening signals the real party.  If anyone is up for challenging him in any game, let me know.  We’ll definitely be playing games with bellies full of turkey on Thursday!

I have said for years that I think the coolest invention would be some sort of VCR/DVD device that could record your dreams while you sleep and then you could watch an awesome movie in the morning!  Of course, with all the morphing of people and places that happens while I sleep, it would probably be one crazy video.  I feel like I need this machine more than ever right now, however, because I am not having any memories of the dreams pregnant women are supposed to be having.  The woman in the video we watched at Childbirth class admitted she’d had a dream of giving birth to 5 rabbits (3 boys and 2 girls, just FYI) and then said, “And I wondered to myself– would they grow up to be humans?  Or would they stay rabbits?” which somehow was pretty funny in her delivery.

In any case, I haven’t dreamed of being maternal much at all.  I did have this really freaky dream the other night that I’ve forgotten most of but will not soon forget how I tried to get some sort of bug out of the house, and when I slammed the glass door, it was suddenly this GIANT spider taunting me about how that wasn’t going to work.  Larger-than-life buggy creatures have always been one of my fears (along with monsters reaching up through the toilet and grabbing me) so I didn’t like that much.

Sorry, boring news day.  We went to pick up Seth’s tux last night for his role as an usher in his brother’s wedding in Austin this weekend.  Since we were out, we figured we might as well eat (although we need to start eating lots at home so we can fill our new dishwasher with dishes and take it for a spin!) and had a delightful meal at Sushi King.  I am quite enjoying the veggie treats– sweet potato tempura roll, avocado roll, squash roll, etc–but I can not WAIT to be able to get back to the spicy tuna and salmon and all that.  I’m also ridiculously excited about being able to eat sandwiches without worrying about listeria.  The only 2 turkey subs I’ve eaten throughout this whole time that didn’t involve taking home and heating the meat until steaming in the microwave were from good ol’ Weggies.  I mean, really, if you can’t trust Wegmans, who can you trust??

 PS–Happy 30th Birthday shout-out to Joel P!!

Hello all!  I apologize for being a total loser and not keeping up with the blog.  Once I started letting it go it was hard to get inspired to write again.  But now I am attempting it again! 

So a lot has happened since my post in July.  For one, Ethan was born 9/26!  The day was perfect except for the fact that my induction was bumped for 7 hrs due to the high volume of babies coming out because of the Havest Moon (yes, the full moon urban legend is true for labor & delivery as well as the ER).  Ethan was also trying to make it on his own even though we scheduled his due date.  I got pretty sick that morning for the first time in my pregnancy and was contracting quite a bit.  I think he would have made an appearence in the next 48 hours regardless.  My goal was to deliver on day shift (before 7pm).  I was 5-6cm when I got a bed at 2pm, I started pushing at 6:10, and he was born at 6:57!  Don’t get me wrong, I love our night shift nurses, but a majority of my friends work on days. 

Drew, who is the more dedicated to blogger than I started sogncentral.com if you really want all Ethan all the time.  There are pics and videos as well as daddy’s thoughts and experiences.  We can also invite you to out Kodak albums if you really want to see 300 pics of the little guy!

So now our boy is going to be 7 weeks old tomorrow.  The first few weeks of life were great!  He ate, slept, and pooped.  Now, he still does all of those things, but has the added skill of screaming/crying during the majority of his waking moments.  It will be wonderful when he decides that life isn’t all that bad and comes out of this stage, but for now we just have to take it one day (somestimes one hour) at a time.