32/40, or 8/10, or 4/5

Who's that hot mama? That's right, it's my wife Beth. Today marks Week 32 of the pregnancy. This puts us at roughly 4/5 of the process! Baby D is taking up more and more space everyday, and his movement has gotten much stronger. Last night, as I read to him, he was punching his poor mama pretty hard. It felt like a tiny fist pressing against her belly.

So far, we've toured the maternity ward of the hospital (we're birthing at the Ohio State Medical Center, for those who want to know); we're almost done with our birthing classes, which have been informative and comforting; and the nursery is practically finished. Once it's done, we'll post some pictures up here on the blog. And we're almost done landscaping the backyard - not necessarily for the baby, but we wanted everything organized and in the ground before Beth's baby shower in a couple weeks. I just have to fertilize and mulch and then we'll watch it grow! Now I've started planning the bag we'll take to the hospital, and drafting the e-mails/blog post I'll send out when we head in. So our preparation (as much as we can), is almost complete!

It's funny how I feel a definite pressure to complete a bunch of things before the baby arrives. The pressure is all self-applied, that's for sure. And none of it has been that "This is my last chance at freedom" feeling, like I've got to ride a motorcycle or skydive or go on some wild adventure before the baby comes home. It's more the type of "Let's get this fixed" or "Let's paint this room" or "Let's finish the landscaping" feeling. More task-oriented. And we're doing well, I think. We've made a bunch of minor repairs around the house over the past few weeks; the nursery is almost finished; we cleaned, patched, and repainted the nasty basement stairway; and a friend from church is here now doing some electrical work. Plus, we're getting to travel a bit in the next month: a trip to see friends in Chicago this weekend, a cousin's wedding in Pennsylvania a couple weeks after that. And then we'll settle in and wait for Baby D-Day!