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.

Straighten up and fly right

Every day it seems there's a new reason to hate flying—the checked baggage fees, the ever-expanding list of prohibited carry-on items, the security checkpoint prostate test. On their own, they're each annoying, but put them all together and it's no surprise that the rates of self-inflicted death by Cinnabon are on the rise. This past week as Carrie and I took our last trip out of state before the baby comes (details on the trip in a future post), we got to experience all of the above (good news, we're polyp free!) plus more. The "more" refers to a pet peeve of mine, one that reared its ugly head on each leg of our trip—the mass transit recliner. Without fail, every time the seat belt ding goes off on a flight I'm on, the jackass in front of me kicks back like they're in a bacalounger in the man cave. Suddenly I go from being a simple airline passenger to an unwilling participant in some form of mile-high tandem luge, my only option being to grin and bear it or offer them a shave like I'm Floyd the barber. It's not just that "recliners" are uncourteous, it's that they actually think that being 5 degrees closer to prone is suddenly going to transport them into a world of comfort and relaxation. Face it people, you're going to be uncomfortable, don't make it worse for someone else. Just because the button is there doesn't mean you have to push it. Suck it up and enjoy your party peanuts.

Thanks, I feel better.

Blood, Sweat and Swearing

"Where did that hook in again?"
"I don't remember taking this part off."
"We don't have the pieces shown in these instructions."
"Is this how it looked before we took it apart?"

These are not the things you want to hear as your husband and father-in-law are trying to put back together the brand new couch that they just took apart to get inside your house. But it's exactly what went down in our basement this past Saturday.

As part of Operation Lindeman Nursery (which really has nothing to do with any work on the nursery), we had to move our office into our old spare room -- which meant losing our one spare bed. While we didn't want this to keep guests away, we found an alternative to offering the phone number to the closet hotel: a sofa sleeper. This sounds even less comfortable than a sleeping bag, which is why we sought out something different -- we found a sofa that folds out into a platform bed with a foam mattress. We're hoping this keeps guests comfortable, but not too comfortable, if you know what I mean. We also had one other really big requirement: the couch had to come apart in order to make it down to the basement. We learned the hard way that older homes don't have standard size door frames when we moved into this house six years ago. My old sofa sleeper barely made it into the house and never saw the basement where it was intended to go. Instead, it went straight to the DAV. So this time we had to find another way to make this work.

We lucked out. We found just what we needed online and a furniture store in KC that can order them. The catch? We could pay an arm and a leg for the distributor to drop it off in our drive-way at their convenience, or we could make an adventure out of it and rent a Uhaul to bring it down and deliver it ourselves. Not one to pass up an opportunity to drive an oversized truck with no cruise control on the windiest day of the year, Craig chose the Uhaul.

So in a whirlwind trip to Kansas City this past weekend, we picked up our couch and brought it home so that Craig and his dad, Sam, could put it together before the Shocker game -- giving them just two hours until tip off. Oh, and the store only provided half of the instructions for disassembly. So seven hours, one gash to the head and several cuss words later, the sofa had been taken apart in the Uhaul, carried downstairs in multiple pieces and put back together. The true test will be when my mom sleeps on it tomorrow night.

The biggest pieces.


Sam and Craig working hard while Luka assisted.


The gash, covered by one ferocious band-aid.


Done. Finally.