Thanks for a good 4th, CU

I hope everyone had a safe and fun 4th of July. Happy birthday USA! Anyway, Linnea and I got pretty lucky this year. Usually, we head up to her Grandma's house on Lake Geneva and hang out with her family, and go out on the boat to see the fireworks on the lake. We couldn't do that since Linnea's ready to pop. Luckily, due to the construction at Memorial Stadium (usual fireworks venue), they put on the fireworks right down the street from us! It was awesome, we sat on our patio with our mosquito candles and had a perfect view. Then we just walked inside when done, and watched the line of cars behind the house for about a half hour.

For those keeping track, the Little Guy still doesn't want to come out yet. We have no idea what's going on anymore, because we've already had all of the "signs" that tell you you're supposed to go into labor soon.

Come out already!

For at least a few months (probably when they changed our due date from 7/16 to 7/7) Linnea and I have thought that we would have our baby quite a bit earlier than the due date. Well, it's less than 3 weeks away, and Linnea is feeling just about as normal as usual, besides the fact that we know he's in position to go. The window is closing I guess, and we're getting the feeling that he's not going to come early at all. Obviously this is fine if he's not ready yet, if not everything is fully developed yet. But based on his size, we thought that he was, and it would be nice to have him soon, as we're dying to be parents and Linnea is ready to sleep on her stomach and back again. Also, I'm ready for my 2 week vacation from work. Oh well, he'll come when he comes I guess.

Congrats to the Celtics. I was absolutely disinterested in this series, but man, the Celtics laid a beatdown tonight.

We found this little par 3/4 9 hole course right down the road from us today! I'm so excited, it only costs $8! There's a range there too, with heaters for cold weather. It looks like a tiny, crappy course, but for the money (and the location), it looks to be an easy option to go swing the clubs within an hour.

We basically stole it...

So Linnea and I went to buy our Baby Bjorn strap-on carrier thingy at Target, and we saw this new model called the air carrier (more ventilated, supposedly cooler), but it was only $25 instead of the $80 for the original carrier. Anyway, we know from previous research that good carriers just aren't that cheap, so we didn't buy anything and decided to go research this new model. Well, it turns out that it's really like $100. It's even $100 ON THE TARGET.COM SITE!!!!!!! What did we do? Of course I'll tell you. We went back to Target and bought that sucker for $25! Don't believe me on the price? Check it out here. Totally awesome, we saved 75%! I wanted to capitalize on this and buy them all, then return them (without receipt for a store credit) to another Target, but Linnea wouldn't let me.

Drop it like it's hot

I was just going to post about all of the great sporting news that's been happening this week in Illinois, but I noticed that I haven't posted since Saturday.

So, first thought: Is it really Wednesday already? Monday holidays really mess things up (in a good way).

Second: According to those experienced with the childbirth process (not me, I wouldn't have noticed), Linnea "dropped" somewhere between Sunday night and Monday morning. That means we could have the baby any time from soon to about a month. A lady she works with said it took her 2 weeks after dropping.

Holy crap. My chances of taking the Ph.D qualifiers (since I haven't finished my Master's thesis yet) look to be dropping quickly. Oh yeah, and holy crap.

Little Guy!

We had an ultrasound today and got to see the little guy again! Everything looks good and healthy, so that was nice to hear. The funny thing is, we're at week number 33 and he measured 6 lb, 4 oz, which is a 36 week size!!! I think the 33 week average is around 4.5 lbs. So he's either going to be really early, or big. It looks like he'll live up to his mom's genes in that all her family's babies are quite large at birth, and the little guy is supposed to keep gaining about a 1/2 lb every week. Another exciting thing we learned was that he's already head down and butt out, in the perfect position for birth, so Linnea can feel less nervous about that. Check out the images we got at the appointment in the album below.

Little Guy

Kicked in the face!

I've been used to feeling baby kicks and flips for a while now, but last night took the cake. I was totally talking to the baby and he kicked back right where my mouth was! He responded to my talking, it was amazing. If I wasn't already in bed I would have jumped around or giggled like a girl or something. It was truly the coolest thing that's happened so far, after hearing his heartbeat for the first time.