OB APPOINTMENT TODAY

Today I saw my OB for my two week follow up. He said my fundus is measuring big - perhaps due to my abdomen's inability to stretch down low - and I have lost weight since the last appointment. I am carrying very high and continue to be nauseous, so maybe Vanessa is pushing on my stomach like a lap band. My OB did officially restrict my travel: Because I am still high risk he doesn't want me to go into labor in a remote location.

This weekend Daddio was my worker bee. What a good man! I made him paint over a perfectly good room in an attempt to make it a nursery. The worst part is, the first color I chose was wrong. Really wrong. The second color was better but not right. I wanted a soft aqua color and I got robin's egg blue. Daddio, surely unwilling to be a slave to my idea of perfection any further, insisted that putting a baby girl into a blue bedroom would create character. "She'll refer back to it in her presidential inaugeration speech," were his exact words. When I was a girl I painted my room pink with white trim as soon as I was given a choice, and would have sold my soul for a white canopy bed. I thought I was doing well to not assume Vanessa would want a pink room, but I didn't mean to give her a boy blue room. (Photos later.)

Today is the day our baby nephew Barry headed off to boot camp with the U.S. Marine Corps at Parris Island. He's 18 but it does seem like yesterday we were changing his diapers. We are naturally concerned, given world politics, but we are also hopeful he will thrive. Our little red-headed Road Runner nephew Daniel enlisted in the Army and completed basic training in August 2001 - you know, two weeks before September 11th, 2001. His group (troop? company?) was ultimately responsible for capturing Sadam. Daniel was a tank mechanic on the front line, and has been back home for a couple years now - a very young Iraqi War veteran.