T-minus eleven days . . .

I see from the handy-dandy baby countdown widget at the upper left of our blog that our baby is due in just 11 days. Jaime tells me that while she feels like she physically can't get any bigger without exploding, she still doubts the baby is going to come early. But any way you slice it, we're within a couple of weeks of our little guy's arrival.

Comparing our preparation for child #2 to what we did before Kate was born reveals some interesting things about how much we must think we have things under control now. With Kate, we had prepared our nursery weeks in advance by adding crown molding, a chair rail, floating shelves and new baseboards, painting it a girly color and hanging letters spelling "K-A-T-E" on the wall. We had all of her clothes hanging in her closet (by season), had read What To Expect When You're Expecting, the American Academy of Pediatrics' Textbook of Pediatric Care, and Guess How Much I Love You? several times each and had our primary, secondary and emergency routes to the hospital mapped out on laminated cards kept in each vehicle (ok, not really - but I thought about it).

With this little guy, we basically went through a mental checklist while watching 30 Rock one night:

Me: "Hmmnn . . . do we know where the infant carseat is?"
Jaime: "I think it might be under the stairs but I don't know for sure."
Me: "Check!"

Jaime: "We don't have any newborn diapers..."
Me: "That's OK, I know where they sell them."
Jaime: "Check!"

Me: "Where's he going to sleep, since Kate's still in the crib?"
Jaime: "He'll be in the Pack-N-Play bassinet for a week or two after we get home from the hospital, so we have some time to figure that one out."
Me: "Check!"

Luckily Jaime's friends gave her a baby shower last week, or our little guy would probably be wearing a lot of cute, pink hand-me-downs.

The Fruits of Child Labor

On Saturday we tackled our vegetable garden project. I put Kate to work with the shovel, clearing the mass of roots that hid just below the surface of the dirt in our raised flower bed. However, because those roots go to the vine that covers the cinderblock wall around our backyard, I'm sure we'll lose a large section of the vine now. Guess that's the tradeoff for having fresh vegetables.

After several hours of fighting the vine roots I planted the tomatoes, squash, red peppers and strawberries that Jaime had picked out. She added some herbs and sweet onions too. At the end of our adventure I took a self-prescribed cocktail of ibuprofen, naproxen sodium and chips and salsa. Hopefully in several months we'll have plenty of fresh vegetables and my back will have regained its proper alignment.

Here's Kate's recent effort imitating animals:

I think we're ready for Easter.