Seven Weeks and Counting.

Wow, is there a lot to accomplish before Delaney arrives. One would think that with a second child, especially of the same gender, things would be fairly straight-forward and not much preparation involved. Wrong!

We have to finish cleaning up the kids' room, remove the old dresser (which I really wish would fit ANYWHERE because we could use the extra clothing storage), put the crib back together, find a new bumper for the crib, finish my art projects, get the newborn clothes rewashed...the list just seems to have multiplied out of the blue.

In the meantime, Rudy is being jerked around at work. It seems that his bosses are punishing him for going to school because it will interfere with their want to have him at work constantly as a salaried manager. So they've postponed his MIT from April until June, which is right in the middle of his summer classes, most likely because they want to push him out of the program entirely. It is a HUGE letdown for us, because we really need the money the promotion was going to bring. It almost feels like we've gone back to square one. This has been our luck for years.

And as I bring up luck, how lucky is it that the gas company accidentally turns off our gas, then comes back and turns it on, but somewhere in there someone manages to break something pertaining to the meter and fails to report it. After what seems like hundreds of calls to the gas company, we find that they are attempting to fix the problem, but in the meanwhile, we've been without hot water for an entire week. What.thehell.man.

I don't want to end this post on a negative note, so I'll say that tonight Afton was goofing around pretending to drink from a block and shaking her head a bunch of times. She was giggling and babbling and at one point Rudy and I imitated her babble by saying "nigh-nigh", to which she turned suddenly, said "nigh-nigh" back to us and began waving as she ran down the hall. We both just stopped and stared at her because we couldn't really believe that maybe, finally, we had happened upon a truly recognizable word! So we began saying it again, asking Afton if she wanted to go "nigh-nigh", and sure enough she continued to turn, wave and run down the hall toward her room. Rudy then picked her up, and to test the theory he put her to bed. Not a peep!

Talk about awesome.

Just a few weeks left now!