1) I’m not in labor. Stay calm.
2) How’s this for stomach shot?! Good stuff, huh?
3) I’m listening to some rad ’80s tunes and Baby is totally digging it. She thinks DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince are way cool — and she totally agrees: parents just don’t understand.
(I’m waiting for Mom to get out of surgery on her foot, and since I live 1/2 mile from the hospital, I just came home to pass the time. I figured this would be an excellent opportunity to sync up my iPod and make sure I have some good laboring tunes. Would anything make you push harder than Debbie Gibson’s “Only in My Dreams”? And between contractions we’ll have some Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” so we can still chill, man.)
4) I got a package the other day that made me laugh. I tried to help out my friend Mike O’Brien with an envelope he needed to get delivered in Maine, like, yesterday. I’m not sure how successful we were, but it was a fun mission [yes, I wore all black that day and sunglasses] and Mike appreciated the effort. 
Thus, he sent a thank-you package. The gifts were very amusing and so very Mike, but what made me laugh the most was his message on the box:
5) Baby is in her 39th week and should be preparing for her grand entrance. Here’s my little sketch of her progress:
It bothers me that no one has praised my artistic skilz, but whatever; I’ll try to move past that. According to the websites, they say to expect the following:
At each of your now-weekly visits, your caregiver will do an abdominal exam to check your baby’s growth and position. She might also do an internal exam to see whether your cervix has started ripening: softening, effacing (thinning out), and dilating (opening). But even armed with this information, there’s still no way for your caregiver to predict exactly when your baby is coming.
So. Hmmph. Is Baby coming out soon or not? I still say yes. My prediction was 12/10 and Chris’s was 12/22. We don’t really know who wins if she arrives any time in the 12 days in-between.
(FYI, we just listened to some Alanis Morrisette and Baby is MAD. She’s already a man-hater and she hasn’t even met her first man yet. Yikes.)
6) Chris is VERY excited about a recent loan we got of a jogging stroller. I was excited because I still had that on my list of things I needed and hadn’t received yet. Chris was excited because this was the stroller that was used by Senator George Mitchell’s children. If he were telling you the story, he would pause dramatically at this point and re-articulate Senator George Mitchell! (Senator Mitchell was a Maine Democratic Senator prior to Olympia Snowe and, well, I suppose one might say that he had a rather distinguished career.)
