Today

So. One week of maternity leave down, and still no baby. I'm a little frustrated with that, mostly because I didn't want to make it to my due date and it looks like I'm going to. I knew that was a very definite possibility with this being my first pregnancy and all, but I was still hopeful that sometime before Week 40 rolled on in that I'd have a baby in my arms instead of my uterus. Oh well! The longer she bakes, the better.

The thing is, the boredom has officially set in. On one hand, I like having time off work to chill and get ready for the baby--this week I've been able to do a lot of sorting (all from the comfort of my couch) and packing things away, so I feel really good about the progress that's been made. As long as I'm relatively stationary, my blood pressure is great, so the less I push myself, the better. The downside to all this sitting is that I'm not doing much walking so I'm not progressing as fast as I could be with all this laboring business.

Today, for example, I did a lot of online shopping and finished up with most of my/our Christmas shopping. I got all of Graham's presents, and pretty much everything else for our family members. That's a huge load off my mind. The few gifts we need to buy we can get next week, either by one of us going out (and by one of us, I really mean Graham) or by ordering online.

I also got our grocery shopping done--also online. I've fallen pretty hard for Peapod.com. Their prices aren't always the greatest, but I tend to shop all the sales and cheaper items anyway, and they still accept coupons like a regular grocery store, the money is just credited back to you later. They also send me coupons pretty often for $2 an order, and I pair those up with their delivery discounts; I can save $2 or $3 sometimes depending on the time frame I choose for my delivery. Today I saved $4, on top of the coupons I'll turn over tomorrow. Normally, I really love grocery shopping. I don't mind it, and I try to go when the stores aren't swamped. The thing is, lately grocery shopping has been a huge pain for me. It's taking me twice as long to get all the shopping done because I'm getting winded in the stores, and because The Holidays are upon us, the stores are even more crowded than usual and my usual parking spots are all taken, so I'm walking further and further just to get into the store. Major dislike! And then, when I get home, I'm getting winded going to and from the car to get all the groceries inside. Peapod delivers to me, so I can shop all week and add things to my cart online, and then I pick my delivery time, check out, and voila! My groceries delivered to me the next day. Sweeeeeeeeeet.

After my online shopping binge, I finished the remaining load of laundry left over from Graham's work yesterday, so all I did was switch over the comforter to the dryer, and then I washed our bedsheets. Come to think of it, the bedsheets are probably still in the dryer.....

I wrote a long manifesto to my friend Jess, then I decided that I had to do something, so I baked some cookies! I sat in the kitchen and found a cookie recipe that I could do based on what I had in my kitchen, and I whipped up a few batches of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. That was great, because I was able to mix everything together and in 15 minutes, I had a batch of cookies in the oven and I just switched them out after 20 minutes. (I also did two loads of dishes today....ssssh! I just couldn't help myself. I needed to. I did dishes yesterday afternoon but we didn't do the dinner dishes yesterday, and we just did a quick rinse because our dinner wasn't very involved anyway. But, after dinner last night, breakfast, my lunch, and the cookies? Yikes! They had to be done.)

Graham came home and he put away the last of the Christmas boxes in the living room. I sat down and played with the cat for a little bit, and he's been really busy since coming home. He took care of the recycling mountain in the mud room, moved a bunch of boxes, set up his Christmas village under the tree, filled the car with gas, and worked on a few small projects while dinner baked in the oven.

Now he's doing the dishes, I'm looking at a Christmas cookie cookbook (in between blogging, of course), and we're thinking about watching one of our rentals or a Christmas movie when he's done. It's going to be a nice, restful weekend here on Natchez. We'll watch the snow fall, drink some cocoa, and wait for the baby to get here. Then again, it is going to snow, and we've got a history with snow, so who knows? Baby could be here this time tomorrow if we're lucky!