Preparations

Winter. Sounds like we are going to get a snow storm tomorrow. I can't believe it is winter already!! Seems like just yesterday I was pulling weeds, and now we are moving the lawn for the last time...in the dark.

A new baby. I can guage the passage of time according to the girth of my belly. It is huge, and I still have 3 months to go! How am I going to walk? Good thing I have this nice rear end, or else I would be so off balance I would tip right over.

Overall being pregnant is wonderful. It's exciting to anticipate the baby's arrival and imagine what he will be like, and the physical discomforts are not too awful. Mostly I dread answering the same questions over and over. I should make myself a T-shirt that says "Feb 16, I feel fine, It's a boy, William John." And then people could move on to more interesting questions like, "Have you had any weird baby dreams?" (As a matter of fact, I had a dream that we forgot to feed the baby and he shrivelled up like a raisin. I also had a dream that I was having a picnic with Bigfoot and a couple of talking bears.)

Christmas. Guess what - I am almost done with my Christmas shopping. Ha! Julie drove down from Grand Forks this weekend, and she and Amy and I spent all day Saturday at the mall. We do this every year but normally it is in mid-December. As usual, Julie had 50 people on her list and she already had gifts for most of them, so she was just picking up stocking stuffers. Amy had not even thought about it yet and she certainly didn't have a list. It was like going shopping with Monica and Phoebe from Friends. (Except I could not be Rachel, because I was having a very bad hair day, and she never has bad hair.)