Teased.

Sometimes living in Kansas really sucks.

Let these pictures stand as exhibit A.

No, I don't have some deep seeded hatred for flowering plants, I just hate what's about to happen to them. You see for those of you not living in Kansas, we're expecting snow over the next few days, and we're not talking about just a little snow, we're talking freakin' blizzards!

That said, by this time tomorrow everything you see here is going to as frozen as Ted Williams' head (but unlike Ted, I'm afraid these puppies aren't coming back). So for all of you in other parts of the country, enjoy your spring and your intelligent conversations about evolution, but before you do, take a good, long look at this face and realize that it will be days until he's going to be able to hike his leg on anything green again and feel guilty … really, really guilty.

Appendage.

For the past two weeks, I've been painting around the clock. The problem is, I've been painting the same room … over and over again … and it's the smallest room in the house. I lost count on the number of coats I have applied, but I would guess it's somewhere around seven. The nice thing about this is that we now have a "safe room" given that the room in question now has walls approximately three and a half feet thick.

The cause of this exercise in inefficiency is unknown, however we did try to use a new low VOC paint and one could argue that the VOCs are the thing that actually makes paint, well … paint. Even after all of the coats, the room still is not perfect, but we learned in one of our classes that babies can only actually see something that's about 18 inches away from their faces so we'll just keep him in the center of the room for a while.

So much to learn, so little time

As we approach week 34 tomorrow -- that's 6 weeks until the big due date for those of you not familiar with the 40-week gestation period (which was me, 34 weeks ago) -- Craig and I are realizing just how much we have to learn before we have a little life we're responsible for. We finished our first of four classes last night. This one was on "Caring for baby." I think a more appropriate title would've been "See how clueless you really are" or maybe "Oh, the joys of having a boy."

During the first two-hour session, Craig and I failed every test. When the teacher asked if babies like baths, Craig very emphatically raised his hand to show just how smart this new uncle was since his niece Hagen LOVES them. Well, Hagen must be the only baby because, according to the instructor, babies do NOT enjoy baths after all. Strike one. The second big failure of the night was when she passed around a basin of bath products and told us to take what we think we needed. Ok, first of all, we weren't really giving anyone or anything a bath. And by the way she phrased the instructions, we thought it was a trick -- do we REALLY need all of these bath products? Surely a baby's beauty regime is less complicated than my father-in-law's. (sorry, Sam) So to show that we were on to this game, Craig and I passed on everything. We didn't need the brush (our doll didn't have hair), and I knew talc powder was a no-no, but I'm not sure why we overlooked the body wash and lotion. I guess we thought a spit bath would be sufficient since all our doll did was sleep all day. Sure enough, we failed again. And finally, the third big mistake of the night was knowing the appropriate time to undress the doll during bath time. Boy did I get my hand slapped as I took off the doll's onesie and diaper before it was time. What was I thinking? The fake water was at the right fake temperature and the fake baby was anxious to fake get a bath. I was so flustered trying to get the stupid onesie back on that I don't even hear why I was wrong undressing him early.

But while we had our share of failures, we also learned a number of things that we'll have the joy of experiencing for real in the months ahead:

1. First and foremost, don't take a little boy's diaper off until everything is good and ready ... and in the down position.

2. Buy stock in washclothes -- you need three for every bath! (who knew the little boy part got its own little washcloth to itself?)

3. Memorize the 5 S's of having the happiest baby on the block (swaddle, side/stomach, swing, shush and suck). When those fail to calm a crying baby, call the grandparents to take over.

4. If it's red, crusty, higher than normal, discolored or worse than usual, call the doctor.

For some reason, they passed us. And we're advancing to the "childbirth prep" class for two full Saturdays later this month. We haven't quite figured out why we'll spend 12 hours learning about labor/delivery and had only 4 hours of lessons on the things that we'll be dealing with for the baby's entire childhood, but I'm sure we'll need every minute.

The most anticipated (musical) arrival of the year.

It's finally here, the release of U2's new album "No Line on the Horizon." As you probably already know, I've been waiting for this day to come for a quite a while, in fact, I've actually waited a little longer than I really had to. Last week several Web sites posted the album for preview (including U2.com) and while I snuck a quick listen to a couple of songs I showed great will power in the name of tradition. You see whenever I new U2 album comes out I have a bit of a ritual I go through which generally starts with the stalking of a UPS driver and ends with me feverishly trying to open a CD package in a deserted Best Buy parking lot.

It's a beautiful day, so how could it get any better? I read this morning that another album is scheduled to be released this year.

Let the countdown begin.

****UPDATE****

OK, I now have it in my possession and I can honestly say it's really good. I was worried, the hype was getting a negative backlash and some people had even begun questioning if U2 is still relevant. However, this album should squash any talk of that. It's extremely innovative and has some great tunes. It was probably unfortunate that they released "Get on Your Boots" as the first single, it doesn't stand up great outside of the context of the album and it's not in my top three or four songs on the album.

Coldyplay is going to have to update their impersonation act.

Lucky number seven.

Saturday was Zoe's seventh birthday and we've been celebrating off and on all weekend, but it wasn't until tonight that we broke out the presents: a new flying squirrel (which we're hoping to test out at the park this week) and "Awful Mad Kitty" her third in the kitty series after the infamous "Big Mean Kitty" and the downright despicable "Dirty Rotten Kitten." As you can probably tell from the video below she loves these guys … in her own way. Oh, and be sure to stick around for a cameo by Luka and his fresh new haircut.

Happy birthday Zoe, we love you more than you'll ever know.