This Too, Shall Pass

Well, we made it out. We left New Orleans this morning at 3:15am. The journey, which normally would take around 4 or 4 and 1/2 hours took exactly 8 hours, much of the extra time sitting in bumper to bumper traffic both on I10 leaving the city, as well as on I55 through Louisiana and Mississippi. This evacuation was better than our first with Ivan, during which the first 10 miles took 3 hours and we lost a car due to overheating, but worse than Katrina which was smooth sailing throughout. It seemed this time around that a lot of people had the same idea we did... leave in the middle of the night. They also waited longer to open contraflow this time around (opening at 4am after we were already on the road). For Katrina, they had opened it at 4pm, about 10 hours before we left. Huge difference! In retrospect, we also should have gone west and then north, instead of North and then west. It seemed like a lot more people were headed north instead of west. Next time, if there is a next time, I'm thinking we'll leave a day earlier in the middle of the night. Convincing Jeff of that will be another issue.

We are now safely at Arthur and Lovejoy's (my boss' parents) in Pollock, LA, which is just north of Alexandria. What a huge relief it was when we pulled in their driveway! We'll likely lose power in 2 days or so when the remainder of Gustav passes over us as a tropical storm, but we are out of the way of flooding, and the major storm impacts. And more importantly, within driving distance of an operational hospital, just in case of more preterm labor issues.

Now we wait .... to see if the levees hold, to see where my doctor will be post storm, to see if our home survives another giant storm - this one coming from a different direction, to see if our lives will be disrupted again for months, to see if our city actually learned anything the first time around. Now we wait ....

Happy Freakin' Birthday.

Happy freakin' birthday to me. I was really, really hoping not to repeat my 29th birthday which was spent evacuating for hurricane Katrina. Well, here we are again.

Jeff surprised me with a little celebration last night including two necklaces, one of which I pointed out to him on one of our excursions in the french quarter (way to pay attention hubby!) and another with a small stone that looks like peridot, my birthstone. He also took me to dinner at the Palace Cafe, which was OUTSTANDING! He decided we should go there because he had heard they make a great bananas foster dessert, my favorite! We had crab cheescake for an appetizer, I had pork tenderloin stuffed with peaches and goat cheese and served over fried plaintains, and Jeff had the seafood au gratin. My entree was possibly the BEST thing I've eaten in the last year. It was absolutely phenomonal. And of course we had the Bananas Foster for dessert, which as promised, was great!

Today will be spent making preparations for the storm... boarding up the house, packing, moving all of our outdoor patio things inside, and then finally leaving New Orleans tonight. Let the birthday celebration continue!

Something to REALLY Obsess About

Well, the good news is I'm no longer the least bit concerned if we have onsies, or diapers, or any other baby supplies.

The bad news is that I'm now watching the weather channel and every other news broadcast in every second of my spare time (and when I should be working and doing other things as well) to see if the track for Hurricane Gustav will bless us with a shift to either the right, or really far to the left.

Assuming nothing changes with the track, we'll be evacuating sometime on Sunday ... but the "cone of uncertainty" is large, and the storm is still days away.

Obsessing....

Over the past few weeks, I've found myself obsessing over minor things which, for some illogical reason, lead me to believe I'm completely unprepared for this baby. Now, when I say obsessing, I mean that's literally all I can think about until I buy or organize whatever the focal point of the moment is.

On the first occurance it was sheet savers, and it was probably a month ago .... I decided one day that I couldn't possibly have this baby yet because we hadn't bought these little changing pad/sheet saver things that someone in babies r us recommended we use. Logically I know that they aren't essential.... but we (yes, Jeff too. Why he goes along with my neurosis, I'm not sure.) made a special trip to the store just to buy those.

Then it was a shelf to store the baby books on. Let me point out that we have exactly 6 baby books .... not exactly tough to find a place for them. But off we went to Lowe's and Jeff hung the shelf for me last week.... thankfully, the baby books now have a home ... phew!... close call!

Last week it was the "coming home outfit". Now I'm not one to go and drop $50 or $100 on a little dress or whatever that baby will probably poop or spit up on before we even take her picture in it. So all the little boutique shops we looked at were out (seriously? People spend that much on clothes that the baby will outgrow in 2 weeks?) and we didn't find anything at babies r us that we liked - or I should probably say "agreed on". So we we ended up at Baby Depot, which is quite possibly my new favorite place to buy baby stuff. CUTE clothes for not so much money!!!! We got a cute little preemie dress and hat, and another backup dress in newborn size, all for about 1/4 of the price of some of the boutiques we've been too. Baby won't have to come home naked!-- like that was ever an issue?

This weekend it was onsies and t-shirts. This list I found online or in one of my books, I don't even remember where, said we needed these little side snap tshirts and a certain number of onsies. Well, upon organizing the clothes we have the other night, I found that we had NO tshirts and only a couple of onsies in premie,newborn, or 0-3month size! Gasp!!! So off to walmart we went, where we found onsies, but no tshirts!!!! oh no!!!!

Sunday night it was newborn diapers. I was organizing the changing table and putting things in my little storage baskets and wanted to fill one with diapers (we still may do cloth, depending on whether the diaper service we found is up and running by then, but we're planning to start with disposables and possibly graduate to cloth later). So I went to our closet where we've been stashing the diapers and wipes we've been buying occassionally with coupons we've found, and "oh my gosh, we have NO newborn diapers!!!!!!!" So I detoured to Sam's on the way home from work yesterday, only to find they didn't have any newborn sized diapers. After dinner, off to Walmart and JCPenny's (still in search of those elusive side snap tshirts) we went. We got the newborn diapers, a tub for the baby wipes (we had a box of 648 baby wipes, but no tub to put them in --- that one was all Jeff--- someone told him you could never have too many wipes, so that's what he decided we needed to be prepared for baby about 3 months ago), and found some side snap tshirts as well as some others that just pull over the head. Crisis averted.

Now, I've read that the maternal brain shrinks by something like 3% in third trimester. Is this what's happening? Am I getting stupid and expressing it through these crazy obsessions or just developing OCD worse than what I usually exhibit? Is this part of that crazy nesting thing they say will happen as you approach the end of pregnancy? Logically I know I'm behaving ridiculously, but I can't seem to stop. I wonder what will be next?

Poor Jeff. Bless his heart for his ability to smile, say "yes dear" and go right along with my neurosis.

What's in a name?

We've added a poll!

We've been doing some debating about baby names for the past few weeks, always returning to the same few to choose from. So we decided to ask your opinion!

We aren't set on the combinations of first and middle names, so if you want to suggest a different combination, please do! If you choose the "these names suck" option, please be sure to leave a comment with another suggestion or why you think these names suck!

We make no promises to take your advice, but we'd like to hear what all of you think, so don't forget to vote!

Eight Years.

August 12 marked our 8 year anniversary. I've decided to pass on trying on my wedding dress this year ... I'm pretty sure it wouldn't go well since my dress is fitted through the waist, which has now expanded to about 44 inches around, 38 weeks fundal height.

For our anniversary, we had dinner at Cafe Adelaide in downtown New Orleans, which was lovely. We started out with a fried oyster appetizer, Jeff had the Rhubarb Glazed Muscovy Duck, I had the Tournedos of Beef, and Jeff finished off the meal with vanilla creme brulee. Dinner was delicious!

We continued the celebration with a dinner at Muriel's in the french quarter on Friday night. For saturday, Jeff suggested we get a hotel room for the night so that I could float around in a swimming pool and take the pressure off my back for awhile --- He's doing such a good job of taking care of me, which I don't make easy but I appreciate more than I could ever express. Saturday afternoon ended up being cloudy and a bit chilly (who'd have thought I'd ever say that in August in Louisiana --- by chilly, I mean it was roughly 80 and cloudy), so we didn't spend much time in the pool. But sunday, after breakfast at IHOP, we spent a couple hours at the pool in the sun, which was just marvelous!

The Baby Room

Our baby room is almost ready. Here are some pictures.

I finished the large dresser this weekend. I may still add some color to the front of the drawers, but I haven't decided yet. Here's the finished product.

We just got the changing table today, courtesy of Sun and Ed ... THANK YOU! It matches perfectly!

We still have some canvases to paint for wall hangings, and I'm planning to paint the base board quarter round to match the wall trim, so we're not quite done. But the baby room is definitely functional!

Humoring Mom

Okay Mom, here are pictures for you. 31 weeks. (the last time doc measured me, I was measuring at 37 weeks, but that was a few weeks ago.

Uggh.

Hi Barb!

~j

Diaper Research

I'm in the process of researching diaper options and am looking for input. We are leaning towards giving cloth diapers a try, but are exploring other options as well. Specifically, I'm wondering if anyone has used g diapers or what type of cloth diapers worked the best. Also, for disposables, I've heard that some moms have favorite brands and some work better for boys versus girls. If anyone has any favorite products/brands, send the info my way! Leave a comment here or email me!