We set to work to transform Baby Office Depot into Jackson's Room.
The transformation included my inaugural visit to the infamous land maze of Swedish furniture plenty, also known as Ikea...and shortly thereafter a LOT of furniture assembly which, thankfully, was mostly completed by Dan. Although, I did end up with a battle scar from my own construction efforts. Needless to say, neither of us is a fan of furniture assembly manuals. Apparently, they stopped using words in them and you're supposed to create a beautiful piece of furniture by inserting A into slot D but you have to first make sure that panel F is facing panel E. Otherwise, you'll have to take the whole thing apart and start over....again! Yea. That happened quite a few times.
Other than furniture assembly, we've tackled things like washing all clothing, bedding, and towels we'll need for Jackson's first three months of life outside the womb. Who knew babies required special laundry detergent?
We signed up for childbirth & labor class as they say all first time parents should. Instead of the 6-week-long course that seemed like it would be WAY too long to spend with a bunch of pregnant strangers, we opted for the 2 week crash course offered by the hospital where Jackson will be born. I was pleasantly surprised with the class and was glad that the material seemed more geared toward a natural childbirth experience. We spent 2 Saturday mornings watching videos of live births and practicing breathing in funny ways. Dan is especially excited about coaching me in the "hee hee hee Hooo!" breathing pattern when the time comes. He's been trying to get me to practice ever since we finished the class.
The highlights of the class for me included rolling around on the big, blue, birth ball and laying on the floor while Dan massaged my back or rubbed my hands with massage oil. Umm...what's not to love about that? Sign me up for another class if that's what it entails!
We also made an appointment with the local police department where a very nice police woman showed us how to properly install Jackson's car seat. It's a good thing we did because after watching her work her car seat installation magic, we realized that we never would've installed the thing correctly in a million years. Many thanks to our friends Stephanie and Kaleb for recommending the appointment.
The closer to my due date, the less brain power I seem to have working in my favor so I've spent each weekend driving up to Target to get the items I forgot to get the weekend before as I check off all my check-lists and make sure I have everything on hand for our trip to the hospital, for the diaper bag, and for postpartum care as well as for the last minute touches in Jackson's nursery.
Check. Check. Check. The baby checklist is slowly but surely coming to completion and we couldn't be more excited about finally meeting our little guy!
