More photos at flickr

Dear Peeps

There are a few more photos of the radiant Janna-Jo on our flickr page: www.flickr.com/photos/davidjannajo.

Thought you'd like to know!

There are nappies in my house

It's becoming evident that a baby is indeed on its way to our lives. There is a mattress on the crib, with sheets on it and a heirloom homemade quilt on top. There is a stroller downstairs (a pram, my British friends, not someone walking casually). There are lots of teddy bears on the shelves (as well as teddy cats, teddy giraffes, teddy rabbits and teddy zebras). There is a carseat in our car. And there are nappies in the drawers.

Bean's at 38 weeks now, meaning that we can't accuse it of being early from now on. The bun is cooked; we're just seeing how brown the topping gets (as it were).

I feel as prepared as I can be, which is not very much. I think the best thing about the preparation wasn't so much what I learned, but how it allowed me to feel. It helped me go through nervousness to a state of happy and excited anticipation.

I can't wait to meet our son or daughter.

Bonkers.

What I do when I get nervous

I get nervous sometimes about the thought of having a baby. Not scared or panicked. Not enfeebled or doubting. Not ever for one second wishing anything different. Just occasionally humbled by the enormity of it all. I sometimes weigh up my impatience and weakness and smallness against this wave of life and get a bit, well, awed.

Whenever I get nervous, one thought always calms me. Actually, more than calms; it picks me up, turns me around towards excited. And that is thinking about holding my niece Libby, my darling sister's baby girl. JJ and I held her when she was 10 days old and I remember being so thoroughly and deeply happy holding her (and I'm someone who is on very familiar terms with happiness).

So then I think about holding my own son or daughter and nothing else seems consequential.

The nursery

So it's done. The room that is, not the baby. That one's still got 10 weeks or so left in the oven.

The nursery used to be the spare room and, like the rest of the house, stood resplendent in builders' beige ever since we moved in a year and half ago. We thought that was a bit, well, beige. And so we set about stripping the walls, polyfillering (not a word, but should be) and sanding.













True to form, that bit took longer than anticipated.

Since we don't know the gender yet (is 'gender' appropriate? does it make my nascent child sound like a verb? seeing as it's not known to be male or female right now, is it like the neutral tense in German?) we opted for orange and white. It's a bright, vibrant orange. It says hope, fun, sunshine. It definitely doesn't say 'Home Depot/Homebase'. No, nope, niet. Whatever it is, we like it.

After painting, we installed a cloud light in the room. As those of you who know me will attest, clouds are a bit of an obsession of mine and like all good parents, I firmly believe that what I like must also be liked by my child (ahem).



Next, we loped down to Buffalo in the Fit to pick up some bargains from WalMart, thanks to JJ's characteristic online sleuthing. Crib and change table are now installed, waiting like a shop before opening.




Of all the recent changes, one of the most striking to me is the addition of the baby furniture. More than buying the stroller/pram, more than seeing baby clothes that people have bought for us. Walking to the bedroom now means seeing the crib out of the corner of my eye on the way past.

Guess we're having a baby soon!

Target treats for baby P!

Our baby had a great Christmas and was showered with lovely gifts from friends and family alike. David was a bit jealous that the baby-to-be actually received more gifts than he did without being born yet but putting on the noise-canceling headphones I gave him (which may come in very handy around the end of April) seems to calm him down.

One present of mine over the holidays was a visit to Target. I love Target. I'm not sure why. Actually its probably because it combines my love of bargains with good design. Also, when people ask where I got something I can say "Target" and know that they cannot go out and buy it for themselves. Pitiful but true.

David, being the loving husband that he is, drove me across the border just so that I could wander around Target for a few hours and pick up a few things. The nice thing about Target is that they have cute maternity clothes and baby gear. I got a dress for our upcoming trip to Britain and we picked up a few 'bits and bobs' for the bean, as seen below.


A few bibs, some great flannel blankets, a blue-bird night light and a few stuffy toys to round out the lot. The orange on the owl is pretty much the colour of the bottom half of the nursery walls but I'll let David handle that in a later post. It's getting exciting now and hard to believe that this little thing of ours will probably be spitting up all over everything. I can't wait.

I ain't saying I'm a glass breaker - but I am messing with some broke dishes...

Ok, I don't want to admit any of this. Evidently when you become pregnant there are all of these crazy things that may happen to you (above and beyond the little alien inside you). A few of these things I just don't believe in, such as 'baby brain'. With baby brain you can become more forgetful, such as stopping sentences mid-way through because you lost track of your thought. Well, this is more of a Scheunhage verbal tick that I have been experiencing for years so no one will be able to tell if I ever do get it (or already have it?). However, there is one thing that is happening where the evidence is starting to stack up against me.

They say when you are pregnant you may become more clumsy. Now, I would not under any circumstances describe myself in that way. I have a degree in dance for goodness sake! I have spent a good amount of my life precisely controlling my body so that it does exactly what I want it to do and projects nothing but an image of grace. I don't fall over, I don't drop things, in fact I rarely even lose things.

Nevertheless, in the past few weeks I have been breaking glasses like nobody's business.



In the photo you will see two of my recent breaks. They are always glasses and it is always while I am doing dishes. I'm currently trying to blame it on my rubber gloves, thinking that the grippy, cross-hatching on the fingertips has worn away, rendering them useless - but that is probably denial.

The tragic thing about this is that one of those pictured glasses was a beloved pint glass. When I met David I think that I had about six of them. Over the years (it's been almost 7 now) we (and by we I mean David) have only broken about 1 pint glass every few years. David loves those glasses and would lament the loss of each one every time it broke. He was nervous when we started getting down to three glasses because he drinks litres upon litres of water a day and ever since I have known him, from the minute he comes home he has had one of those glorious pint glasses within arms reach. He even liked to keep them in various areas just to have water at hand wherever he went.

Well, the glasses are gone. Long gone. I think I broke two pint glasses alone last week. We are now in a drastic search for the ultimate pint glasses to replace our lost loved ones. Wish us luck.