We’re still here: the three of us

I’m not going to post continuously just so that nobody thinks we’re off having a baby.  That said, the countdown has resulted in a good deal of activity around here.

Sydney is trying to finish up the formatting of his dissertation to get it sent off, and thus finds himself navigating the arcane bureaucracy of Cornell’s graduate school.  He has been threatened at home with dire things if he messes up my attempts to keep the house relatively tidy from here on out (yes, I would stack blocks and do laundry on my way to the hospital!).  And he’s still hoping to get rid of his lingering cough so that he gets a few nights of good sleep before the baby comes.  This time we’re hoping not to find ourselves laboring through the night; we’ll see if the little one cooperates!

Given the small size of our washer, I’m trying to stay very, very up on the laundry.  I sent my third chapter off to my advisors, and hope that they’re sufficiently daunted by having it sit in their inboxes that they don’t bug me for more in the near future.  I also sent in edits for a short journal article.  And now, between the two projects, I never want to proofread again.  So I am hunting up reading for my next chapter and looking forward to making a nice, fat stack of books and articles–my favorite part of dissertating.  I am craving exercise, since I know that there will be a lot of in-home time after the baby’s born, but walking just got very uncomfortable, so I’m sticking closer to home.  Oh, and I’m apparently now visibly pregnant, between being in my 40th week and no longer quite so bundled up for the weather (it’s nearly spring here).  The guys at the sandwich shop down the street liked the idea that they’ve been feeding panini to a little one every couple of weeks or so, unbeknownst to them.

Katherine’s lingering cough keeps her from settling right in to sleep, so we hear her for a few hours each night, chattering away to herself and running through the list of words she knows, over and over again.  I used to think that it was bad that she learned to walk, since then she could stand up in her crib and keep herself awake.  Now I wish she hadn’t learned to talk, since it’s now her own talking that keeps her up.  If I go in to cuddle her it just makes things worse: she has an audience!

Erin