How to Pass Time When Your Baby is Overdue

Paint your guest room. I thought that taping off all the trim the night the baby was due would somehow trick him into ruining our plans and coming that night. It didn't and we ended up painting the whole room on Thanksgiving morning.

^^ Notice the new paint, the bed frame assembly and new rug rolled up there. All part of passing the time.^^

Deep clean your front room. We moved all the furniture, cleaned the rug (it's a lot more intense than it sounds), made a place for the Christmas tree and put away all the things.

Drive to Maine and go shopping. We love the Crate & Barrel Outlet up in Kittery so we decided to make the trip up there and look around on black Friday. Once again, I thought making plans, especially far away from home, would somehow entice the baby to make a move but it didn't. We did end up with a nice new rug though.

Buy and put up your Christmas tree. We got all the decorations out and strung 7 strings of lights on that thing. We also put up all the other Christmas decor- we have a LOT of it!

Change out your bed frame in preparation for your new mattress to arrive. To be fair, Thomas did this one mostly on his own.

Walk around the mall. I think we did about three miles in one go there. I'm pretty sure all it did was rock the baby to sleep, he doesn't seem to be any more willing to make a move.

Go out to lunch with your husband. We try to do this every once in a while and since I am no longer working I had plenty of time to drive up to Andover and have a little Mexican food with him.

Walk around Target for an hour trying to find something interesting to buy. I only found one pair of cozy socks which cost $2. I didn't feel like waiting in line to buy just those so I left them in a cart and walked out of Target with nothing. How is that even a thing?!

**I finished writing this blog post the night that I ended up going into labor so maybe the Mexican food for lunch and walking around Target really did do something to get things moving**

Halloween 2015

We have loved owning our own home this year. It's been nice to live in a neighborhood rather than an apartment! We've been looking forward to celebrating the holidays in our own home before we even started looking for a house in earnest- we bought about 20 strings of Christmas lights on clearance last year just in case we had our own place by this December.

Our town is pretty big on Halloween, I think it has something to do with the proximity to Salem (yes the Witch Trials Salem). Our town has a Halloween parade every year and people put up lights and all sorts of decorations on their houses. I really like Halloween but we have never had trick-or-treaters come to our door since we've been married- not many people come to apartments with a door code on the building. Thomas never had trick-or-treaters come to his door growing up either, he lived down a spooky looking lane and nobody ever dared venture down there for a treat.

This year Thomas cooked up an idea to do something a little more than just hand out candy. We decided to go all out to be the cool house on the block. We borrowed a fire pit from some friends, brought out all the lawn chairs and set up a hot chocolate and cider station.

We invited some friends to come trick-or-treat in our neighborhood and use our house as a home base to keep warm. Everyone that came down the road was welcome to enjoy the fire in the driveway and we whipped up fresh hot chocolate all night. We finally met some of our neighbors which was nice especially since we've lived here since March and know pretty much none of them.

I think we might make this a yearly tradition, it turned out to be a huge hit and was so simple to put together. Plus, I love any excuse to have a good bonfire.

Lil Brudder Comes to Visit

A few weeks ago (make that two months now) my little brother called us up and said he wanted to come for a visit. In two days. We were surprised but really excited to see him. It's been years since we've lived close enough to just hang out every day so this was a real treat.

He came bearing gifts- an electric lock for our door. Thomas' eyes sparkled as the two of them installed it. I have to say, it's probably one of the best things we've done for our house. It's so easy to lock and unlock the door and I think of my little brother every time I leave the house.

We took off for New York a day or two after Drew got here and had a great time. It was hard to walk around all day being 30+ weeks pregnant but we managed to show him some of the best parts of NYC. One evening while we were there we sat at a little table in Times Square and marveled at all the craziness. I think it sort of blew Drew's mind a bit. You always see New York on TV and you know it's big and loud but it is a totally different experience to actually be there in the middle of it all.

Brother ended up staying for about a week and a half so we had plenty of time to show him Boston as well. We took him all over downtown and to our favorite places to eat. We did lots of sitting around the house and introduced him to Brooklyn Nine-Nine and whole lobsters.

I was sad to see him go when he headed back out west to a new job in Arizona. It's been a long time since we had any length of time to just be around each other. This kid is so smart and works so hard. He is hilarious and always makes me laugh. He's really the greatest little brother I've ever had.