Due Date

I've had a lot of people ask me about the due date. So far it's December 12th. We'll see if the doctor will let us deliver a week early, though. So that would be December 5th, one day after Megan's birthday. My brother's birthday and my birthday are two weeks apart and we still had to do shared parties once in a while. I wasn't fond of it. I hope my kids think it's cool. At least for a while.

Dear Aunt Flo. . .

Dear Aunt Flo,

I thought I'd write you to see how you've been. It's been a while since we last visited and although I can't honestly say I miss having you around, when I first knew you weren't making your usual visit, I realized just how comforting your presence can be. Cramps and all.

I must say at first I was frustrated by your decision not to come, but now I am 100% okay with it. I decided to be more positive with your surprise lack of visitation this time around. I guess I'll see you next year, right? I mean, sometime in January is when I'll be expecting you to make your general return. And if you don't mind, do you think you could avoid any lengthy vacations for a while? I mean, I know one more after this one is in the books, but could you just put it off a bit? And next time, could we schedule it? I mean, just one quick chat about when you can take off and be gone for a while would be great, instead of this SURPRISE! stuff again. Don't get me wrong, I love surprises, but your kind of SURPRISE! just isn't one that is easy on me.

Do you realize Megan might be sharing a birthday because of your decision to split for a while? Yep. Early December is going to be a busy time for us with you being gone and all that. You know, we had plans. Big plans. Your next vacation was going to be so cool! And you went and ruined it. But like I said, I'm fine with you being gone, just a little disappointed that our supreme nerdiness of an induction on 10/10/10 didn't work out. I guess I should explain how this nerdiness is so supreme, since you may not be familiar with binary or good sci-fi literature. In the book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a super computer is built to answer the question: What is the purpose to life, the universe, and everything? The computer comes up with the answer 42. In binary 101010 is 42.

Aunt Flo, do you see why this was so cool? But alas, it is going to be someone else's supreme cool nerdiness and not ours. And that's ok. We'll have a party that day or something.

Anyway, I just wanted to say hi. Have a good vacation and I'll see you next year some time. Cramps and all.

Surprise!

We had a good weekend here. Nathan was on Spring Break all week which was great. On Wednesday he told me he had a surprise for me on Friday. So Friday morning we woke up early and got in the car and got driving. A couple hours later I recognized a Mc Donald's. We hadn't eaten there (blech), but we'd turned around in the parking lot months ago. We were in Pennsylvania. And not just anywhere in Pennsylvania, but we were near Ikea.

We pulled into the parking lot, took Megan to the kid play area (Jeremy sadly is still too short to enter the play area and not fully potty-trained), and then began meandering though. Nathan asked me if I knew why we were there and I had to be honest: No Earthly Idea.

I knew there were tons of things I wanted at Ikea. But I couldn't think of why we would be there other than just to have something to do.

When we got to the bedroom stuff he walked to the dressers and said, "Pick one."

I was shocked. I got to pick out a new dresser!! I've been using the K-Mart dresser we bought for Megan when she was born. The drawers stick, refusing to either come out or go back in. Also, I have more clothes than the average 4 year old, and needed more space than a simple, small, 4 drawer dresser would allow.

And since the last time we went to Ikea we bought a dresser for Megan and Emma to share, and I of course picked out my favorite dresser for them, I got to pick out the same dresser for me. I just picked a different color this time. So mine is a black wood. And has no hardware. Because, if you recall, I bought a bunch of different pieces of hardware for Megan and Emma's dresser at Anthropologie. Nathan would prefer that my dresser look "classier." Really, that's exactly what he said. So, for my dresser, I will be picking matching, cool, vintage-type hardware. That's ok, right Nathan?