Getting ready for Baby

I'll have to admit that I may go a bit overboard when I get ready for a baby. Of course having done this twice already I also know that life is a bit more crazy than normal in the first month. I like to get a lot ready before hand to make my life a bit less crazy later. So this week was food week and I now have 13 casseroles in my freezer as well as many meals of ground beef fried up, a turkey cooked sliced and frozen and the broth ready for some yummy soups. I've also been working on baking buns, cookies and muffins so that the kids can still have snacks for awhile. I actually love being in the kitchen all day and preparing stuff. There is a great feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day when I look at everything I have done. The life of a mommy seems full of unfinished jobs and I like to have some moments of glory when I can say, 'Look what I completed'.

Besides baking I have been turning our house upside down to prepare. Aslynn moving into her toddler bed was just the first step. I have been rearranging closets and dressers and even attempted to clean mine out to take stuff to Salvation Army. I have also been hanging pictures, and just generally reorganizing a lot of the house so that I can feel more organized. I am far from done but am hoping to get a lot more done before baby arrives.

The topic of when baby is coming is really up in the air. 'Our' due date is February 13th, but 'we' went 10 days early with Aslynn so I am trying to be ready just in case this one shows up early at the beginning of February.

Never before have Mark & I had so many problems naming our children. Micah's name was just there and perfect. For the second one we did have a lot of girl names picked out and it did take us awhile to weed through them, but Aslynn came up and seemed perfect. This time we are going a little crazy though. Had you asked me last year at this time if I had a boy name picked out I would have said a very definite yes and been very firm. This name has stuck with me until November when we began to discuss names in earnest and a few others come up that we liked. Now we are down to two names to choose from. We like them both equally and are trying to decide how you chose between two names that you like just as much. The option of just throwing one in as a middle name does not even work as we already have two middle names picked out. I am trying to decide if we should just toss a coin or how on earth we are going to choose. I'm not usually the type of person who tells people the names I like but this time I finally asked two friends what they thought. You know just taking a poll and seeing if they thought the names were to out there or not. Unfortunately both friends I asked liked both names and were no help with helping me choose. Oh well. I do have a few weeks yet and it may just come to me at some point.

In the meantime I think I'll go switch my laundry and read a book tonight. Some of the Youth Group guys are over and they are wrestling in the basement with Mark. This doesn't look to fun to me and I don't think it will be too rude to just go up to my bedroom and read.