Due...and Overdue

Just thought I'd post a quick note to alert those of you who are maniacally checking the blog for word of a baby: no baby yet. This means that we are entering that horrendous state of being overdue, which, now that I'm in it, I would not wish on anyone! May all of you pregnant ladies out there have your babies early (not too early, just a little early)! Oh, the waiting...

Merry Pregnant Christmas

Yes, still pregnant. We had a lovely Christmas celebration, with members of both of our families coming to spend time with us, in case we needed to make a dash for the hospital. A few photos (click to see them large):

Winter Wonderland

Look at the gorgeous frosty views that greeted us this morning:



What a winter wonderland we are living in!

Campus has gotten quieter here day by day, as more and more students finish their finals and head home for winter break. As each day passes without Pickle's arrival, I have enjoyed checking things off of my to-do list. Still looming large: one more final exam to give and grade, and a meeting, both tomorrow...and a bunch of other research-related things I'm slowly chipping away at but that don't have a hard-and-fast deadline so I prefer to ignore them as much as possible :). This means my last day of commuting is tomorrow! Yay! As for my work here, it's all but done--exams are graded, I just need to enter students' semester grades online, which will probably happen later tonight.

No sign of baby yet--he or she doesn't seem to be in a hurry, as far as we can tell. We have friends and family coming for Christmas--which I'm just realizing means they are coming next week! My, how time flies. Just 9 days until the due date, now...so we'll see if baby decides to make this his/her first Christmas, or to wait until next year...

No baby yet...

Well, we don't have anything as exciting as a baby to post about. Not yet. As it could still be weeks, we figured we better post about something else in the meantime. The trouble is, most of our time has been spent on boring things like school and work. We did take some time last weekend to get in the holiday spirit:

Picking out our Christmas tree in Red Wing

All decorated and ready to be admired...maybe by a newborn, someday soon?!?!

On the baby front, we're trying to be patient. Jess has made it past the last day of classes, and has given one of her three final exams--so I keep telling myself that it may be best if Pickle waits until after I get all my grading done, even though I'm anxious to meet our little one. Andy preaches this Sunday, so I'm sure he'll be glad to have that checked off his list before baby arrives, too.

Full Term

Well, here we are: full term. I would say that now we start waiting...except that we've already been waiting for nine months! So maybe now we start the anxious, "it could happen any day" waiting. I think we're pretty ready. Sure there are more work things to get done, so every extra day/week will get us closer to fulfilling all the teaching/research/preaching obligations we have made for the month of December...but the bulk of everything is done, or at least "done enough," should Pickle decide to arrive ahead of schedule.

The belly this morning: day 1 of week 38. Just think, this could be the last belly photo!

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that a Pickle soon would be there...
Here we have our stockings, two of which I knit last year, and Pickle's which I just finished a couple weeks ago. No name yet--we have to wait and see if Pickle is a he or a she!