I'm in the single digits now with 9 weeks to go. No, I don't feel any pressure. Why would I feel pressure? Yeah I know that we haven't bought any cribs or a bassinette or car seats or, for heaven's sake, CLOTHES yet and that the diaper service still hasn't gotten back to me and I should probably call them AGAIN or we're going to wind up going the disposables route.
Ugh.
Yes, there will be lots of shopping happening in the very near future. We have to get one more major purchase out of the way — an apartment-sized combo washer / dryer — before we embark on purchasing all the baby stuff. Thank God / the universe that I put together a registry / shopping list that can be ordered entirely online if I need it to be.
On the plus side, I finally have a formalized maternity leave plan. My boss and I sat down last week and agreed that my last day in the office would be June 1st. I'll work from home the week of June 4th, and if I haven't given birth by then, begin my leave on June 11th. My revised due date is June 18th (38 weeks) so having the week before to prep and relax would be nice. Of course, this is all subject to the whims of the two inhabitants of my uterus. They might decide that 38 weeks is a little too long to wait and decide to make an early departure from their ever-shrinking surroundings. Still, it's nice to have a plan, however unreliable it might turn out to be.
Mark's trip to WV and back went really well. He got to spend the weekend visiting with his dad, sis, brother-in-law, nephews and a ton of other family whom he hadn't gotten to see since we last visited a few years ago. All of them wanted to hear about how the the twins were doing so there were many calls to say "hi" to Mama which helped to assuage some of my loneliness.
The net result of his trip was Moby II:
Moby is an extremely well maintained white Chevy Venture. It is sweet and gorgeous, has a light grey interior and seats six humans or, in our case, four humans, a tongue-lolling rottweiller and four scared and very pissed off cats. Mark drove Moby back home through the Nor'Easter we had on Sunday and apparently the car handled really well so that makes me feel very good about it. I told Mark I'd get him a Garmin and a subscription to AAA but apparently that offends his "Southern male" sensibilities and I can only get them if I finally learn how to drive.
My fear of driving may eventually be conquered by my desire to get to the yummy yarn / craft mega-sales upstate. However, I don't see that happening anytime before the kids are twenty two.
Speaking of yarn, my friend Sandy and her daughter Eva came over for a knitting lesson on Saturday. I'm glad to say that I managed to succesfully teach Sandy — I totally bombed with Eva, unfortunately — after I changed the cast on method. The backwards loop cast on was causing too many problems with it's ever-growing distance between stitches so I taught Sandy the knitted cast-on and VOILA! Problem solved. The much firmer cast-on enabled her to quickly learn how to knit and purl. I also had her do some moss stitch and ribbing before she learned to cast-off.
She and Eva went home with some yarn, issues of Knitters, FCEK and KnitSimple and straight needles I was no longer using so they could continue practicing on their own. Sandy will also be joining the lovely ladies of Knit Club on Wednesday — I'm hoping that I FINALLY get to make it after a two month hiatus — for more fun. She's decided to make a vest for her son's birthday so there will be more lessons in the future.
As for my own knitting, I finished the right front of the second Oz Vest and have the left front to go. The goal is to finish all the knitting on it today, then to move on to finishing the knitting on the second Harvey Kimono. That should carry me to the end of this week.
I want to have everything blocked and sewn up by the end of this month and that includes starting and finishing the second Hooded Pullover as well. It's only slightly ambitious since I definitely could get more knitting time in each day by knitting during lunch and at night before bed. I've just been lazy about blocking out time for myself at work so I think I'll make myself a sign that says "At lunch. Please return at ___" and put that next to me while I knit. It worked for another of my co-workers so maybe it will work for me too.
