Happy Birthday to me

Tomorrow's my 29th birthday. That's the age that lots of people pretend to be, when they don't want to get any older. After 29 comes 30, and then it's just a giant slide towards 40 and beyond.

More importantly, my Grandma Schaefer turns 98 in one extra day, May 21st. She lives on her own and until a year ago, was not taking a single medication. Think of all the people our parents' ages, or even OUR age, who are already on some sort of medication for a chronic condition, like high blood pressure or cholesterol. Talk about good genetics... she's from hearty Irish stock. Which, actually, I'd almost consider that they'd be a little worse for wear on the grand scheme of things, as her father was an unemployed flax-mill worker in County Armagh and I'm sure they were working hard, with not a ton to eat. She was born in good old Grand Rapids though, and prospered on good Michigan milk and cherries :-)

For my birthday I am treating myself to less work and more personal pampering... baby's getting big and life is starting to edge towards that "world of uncomfortable" that pregnant ladies talk about. It's time for prenatal yoga, swimming, fruits and lots of stir-fry. We're testing a theory brought up by our birthing class teacher - don't give your kid anything other than vegetables when it first starts solid foods. We thought we'd kick that off amniotic-style... so I'm trying to catch and send the vegetables, but as a result, I'm bombing Saby out of the apartment now with noxious broccoli gas. Apparently the whole thing of giving stomach gas to your baby via breastmilk is rubbish, so as long as he can continue bearing it, we will continue the experiment, even once babe is born. And hopefully Spampy will come out of the womb and ask to be taken directly to Mongolian BBQ.

Yesterday we had an Ikea breakfast to fuel about 2.5 hours of Ikea wandering, down at - yup! you guessed it! IKEA. We moved into a two bedroom apartment having only about 1.25 bedrooms worth of stuff, and now we're looking for a sofa bed for the front room, a bed for the guest/baby's room, a chest of drawers at the right level to also be a changing table (functionality), and maybe a hutch or sidebar. Saby was a TROOPER and wandered happily with me among the POANGs and BJURSTAs. When we realized that a Poang chair would be much cooler and more comfortable than a regular nursing rocker, we giddily decided to get one and did finally burn ourselves out trying to find it in the "self-serve" area. I've never shown my middle finger to more inanimate objects on shipping palates before in my life... alas, the Venna blue was out of stock, so we shall purchase our lovely chair and ottoman combo in a few weeks when we go back for a properly researched shopping orgy.