Well, it looks like Evan's birthday will be July 2nd. That is if Christina's OB practice will ever answer the phone or call her back.
Apparently there is only one person who can do the scheduling and she's impossible to get ahold of today.
We're going to schedule to be induced on Thursday morning. Means we'll actually be going in later on Wednesday night to get Cervidil since she's only 50% effaced. Get to spend the night there, then sometime early on Thursday she'll get the pitocin assuming she doesn't go into labor during the night.
So, tonight is date night - our last night together without a kid for the next oh, 18 years... haha. It's also our last day at work today for a while!
Starting work on a home photo studio the last couple weeks.
Still have to paint and hang some shelves, so just ignore all the tools and junk in the photo:
Picked up some really high quality photo backdrop stands from someone in Columbia listing them on Craigslist. Well made aluminum stands with three cross bars for backdrops. I've only got one cross bar on in the photo above. And the one cross bar shown is only 2 of the 4 sections, so the stands could be twice as wide. Basically pro-grade stuff a former photographer used once for one photo shoot and was getting rid of because he was changing careers.
They came with one roll of black seamless paper, not that wide, but free is still free I suppose. I'm going to get a roll of white and some other backdrop as well at some point. Also looking at some kind of a softbox deal for light.
Will be fun for baby photos, but of course I can't resist playing around with everything now so I took a couple test maternity shots this evening including the cheesy heart-hands shot everyone does:
Should be fun stuff to play around with through the years. Have a lot to learn though!
A friend of ours, Gina Smith, who went to high school with Christina broke the Mark Sanford story. She's gotta be loving it as a reporter! Here's a link to her as a featured guest on msnbc.com:
No news on Evan, he's being stubborn. Probably wants to show up on his original due date like his Daddy did when he was born. Lastest is that at the next doctor's appointment on June 29th they want to discuss inducing. I think we're going to ask for an ultrasound then so that we can better make the decision on when because it'll help knowing how big he is currently. If he's not too big, then we may wait until the 41 week mark which is as long as they'll let you go there. That would be 7/7 which would be a pretty cool birthday.
Doubt they'd let us pick the 4th, doctors have cookouts also.
Had a very interesting and fun birthday today. No baby, but after contractions yesterday and today we decided to go walk it out a bit again today. And took a drive around Columbia for a while as well. Ended up with strong enough contractions we went in so they could check her and put her on a monitor for a while.
A little less than 2cm, so they had us walk the halls for about an hour and the contractions returned. However, since that's the only time they're really bad they sent us home. The nurse basically said when they're like that and they get progressively even worse without being up and doing anything, then it's time. Something we more or less already knew, but the contractions the last couple days while walking around were quite convincing.
So we went and got some dinner and took it to the parking on the lake and then went and got a couple of drinks with Tim and Kristi.
Anyway, at least we now know that we have everything ready to go and can pack it back in the truck quickly. In fact, assuming we're headed to work tomorrow, we'll probably just take it all with us.
Not really many signs of Evan arriving tomorrow. Had hoped he would be born tomorrow because it's my birthday and it's Father's Day. But, I should probably get used to a baby dictating at least some of my schedule, eh?
Tomorrow is the first day of Summer (and the longest day of the year so I technically get the longest birthDAY possible) - but the summer storms are already here in SC. We had a huge front roll through Thursday evening that knocked our power out for over 7 hours. Finally kicked back on around 2am.
Found out that the little generator I have that Brian found for me has *just* enough watts to power the 46" Sony LCD TV and Xbox 360. Of course, no sooner do I get all of that set up and the power cords are run the power kicks back on at 11:30pm. For 5 minutes. Just long enough for me to unhook everything and put away the generator. And at that point it was up to like 78 degrees in the house and I didn't feel like setting it all back up. Got some points though with prego because I got her a deep cycle battery, the inverter, and a fan to run to try to stay a little cooler.
Right when the front was arriving I grabbed the new camera and shot some video of the storms coming in:
You can also click the name of the video to go to the Vimeo website where I upload them to and watch the larger sized copy.
Today is Red Bull day. UPS dropped off a bithday present last night from Brian and Tasha - a card, a Starbucks gift card, and a 12 pack of Red Bull. Enough to last me for a quite a while since I don't drink them all the time. That's because they are really potent - the one I had this morning will still be kickin' as I try to go to sleep tonight. But, that makes them perfect for Saturdays when stuff needs to get done. It's like ambition in a little 8 ounce can. And the list of stuff we need to do before Evan gets here isn't getting smaller.....
I'm betting some folks out there that read this blog probably think the baby's here since I've been quiet for a couple weeks, but no. No baby yet.
Though today Christina had some fairly regular, 5-minutes-apart contractions. But they weren't painful and they ended up easing off, so false alarm.
We're really just been trying to get ready around here. It seems like the list at home and the list at work of things that need to get done before the baby arrives never get any smaller, only longer. So, whatever... what doesn't get done doesn't get done.
Tonight we made sure we had the last of the essentials - extra crib sheets, two waterproof crib pads, baby monitor - things like that. Also picked up a baby book and one of those picture frames with the plaster cast of the footprint. Wanted to have that for when he first comes home and his feet are at their smallest.
Still haven't really finished the bonus room so no new photos. We bought some no-VOC paint so that I can work on it during paternity leave... assuming I can even stand up from being tired, who knows... haha. Anyway, wanted to get a backdrop hung and try to get some new pregnancy photos since she's so far along now. If I don't get anything up soon, we may just find a local photog with a studio we can go to instead.
Not a lot else going on - work is going well for both of us. Christina had some trouble with her work agreeing to let her work from home for weeks 7-12 of her 12 weeks of leave she's taking. But once they realized it was either let her work from home or you don't see her at all until the 12 weeks is up, wanting her back in some form or another won out so that's what she'll do. It beats her having to take leave without pay for those weeks since she doesn't have the leave time.
Also got wrapped up in the Stanley Cup finals again this year only to watch the Wings lose Game 7 to the classless snotty punks from Pittsburgh who apparently think slashing at someone's injured foot is just fine - just one example of many. But, they were probably the more talented team by a little, and the Wings gave them by far their best test fo the playoffs. Still would have been nice to win the Cup back to back especially since I missed last year's Finals while we were in Germany.
Well, maybe I'm speaking too soon here about the baby... cause as I type this Christina keeps asking me what time it is... timing her contractions again. 4 minutes between those last two! We'll see if they calm down or if my next post is that we're going to the hospital I suppose. But, over 8 minutes until this one, so they're not very regular yet or anything. As the doctors would tell us, it could mean two hours it could mean two weeks. I'm still hoping for June 21st to share a birthday with Evan and have him arrive on Father's Day.
Ahh, June. What a great month. My birthday is this month and Kristi's is also. This month will most likely see the birth of Evan too.
Bound to be an exciting one as months go.
The month started off like a lion though, out of work yesterday because of very little sleep the night before and I had a splitting headache most of the day that I ended up going to bed with even. Thankfully that's gone this morning (the double-shot Vivano probably helped) so the month is already improving.
