34 Weeks

Your baby now weighs about 4 3/4 pounds (like your average cantaloupe) and is almost 18 inches long. Her fat layers — which will help regulate her body temperature once she's born — are filling her out, making her rounder. Her skin is also smoother than ever. Her central nervous system is maturing and her lungs are continuing to mature as well. If you've been nervous about preterm labor, you'll be happy to know that babies born between 34 and 37 weeks who have no other health problems generally do fine. They may need a short stay in the neonatal nursery and may have a few short-term health issues, but in the long run, they usually do as well as full-term babies.

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Happy 2009 to everyone out there in bloggerville! It's so hard for me to believe that I can now say that my baby is due NEXT MONTH. Whoa. So far '09 has been a great year and I'm sure it will just continue!

This week I have done a TON of cleaning and cleaning out. Remember my mission to get things situated before the end of Christmas break?!? Well, I made it! The guest room is much more roomy and the baby's room is approximately 95% complete! :) My mom came over today to start the actual decorating of her room - and it looks awesome! I am also planning on putting her name above her crib on these cute little boards and hanging them from cute little ribbons, but the paint that we got for the background just isn't quite right, so that's pretty much the only thing we don't have up.

We also got our carseat and stroller this week! Now, if she's born early, we can take her home from the hospital! :) T has had SO MUCH FUN this week putting together all of the new gadgets and toys. Okay, some were more fun than others, but he did it! Now we have car seat in our living room staring at us - the big pink elephant in the room - it makes it difficult to think about anything else and that soon there will be an occupant in there. Craziness. T's project tomorrow is to figure out how to secure the base in my truck.

New Year's Eve was spent with some good friends and their two adorable kids. We had an absolute riot - although we were old farts and left by 9pm so we could sleep in our own bed and turn out the light to go to sleep at approximately 12:01am. It was still a great time and since they're now out of the baby-making stage, they have graciously let us borrow a bunch of their things. Our nursery is now very well stocked with goodies!

It's been a fantastic break - a break that I very much needed. I wrote in my Christmas letter this year that we were hoping to face the new year rested, relaxed and READY! And that's exactly how I feel. No stress, no tension. After many many late work nights in December, T has also taken all but one day off this week with his built-up comp time and it has been great having him home. A lot has been accomplished! I still have some washing to do (we went and bought our first bottle of Dre.ft yesterday!), but other than that, whenever she decides to come - we're ready!

Here is a pic of how the main wall of the nursery looks now. This is really the only wall we're decorating - of the other walls: 1 has a big window, 1 has a dresser, a bookcase and a door to the bathroom, and 1 is taken up by the closet. So, this is the pretty wall! The big flowers on the right are lights from I.kea that look very cool when lit.

Here it is with the lights on - but it looks kinda weird in a picture. They're pretty awesome in person, though!

When everything else is in place and the way it's supposed to be, I'll post that too! :)

It's Saturday night and I'm off to bed. I have had 16 days off from school, which means that tomorrow I have to go spend the day at school to be ready for the week - or, I'm hoping to get ready for the next few weeks to help with the fatigue I'm sure I will be experiencing once Monday rolls around. Whatever planning time I do have during the day, might have to turn into nap time. :) Let's hope for 3 more snow days in January!! :)