Doot... doot... DUE!

Well, my due date has come... and gone... and still no Samuel. We're not really too concerned yet since he's only 5 days late so far, but we definitely got a lot of surprised looks from people when we were at church on Sunday and not in the hospital! I've been amazed at the number of questions I've gotten about whether he's here yet or not. Don't anyone worry, as soon as we have news to report it will be up on Facebook, and the blog, and Twitter, and emailed :) Which isn't to say I've been bugged by all of the questions. I feel very loved that there are so many people who care about this special event in our lives. I've been getting text messages from my little brother Cody about every 4 hours for the past two weeks asking if the baby is here yet and I still just giggle every time I see it, so don't anyone out there worry that they're being bothersome by asking.

Right now we don't have an "action plan" for Samuel's immediate eviction from the womb. I'd like to hold off on an induction if at all possible because I believe that the best thing for the baby is to allow nature to take its course. But we will go in to the doctor's today and see what she has to say. Last week when we went in I was 3.5cm dilated, 80% effaced and Samuel was at 0 station. What was funny was that I'd been having contractions about 5-20 minutes apart consistently from about Sunday night until Tuesday afternoon. While we were at the doctor's office she stripped my membranes, which generally is supposed to encourage labor... No such luck. Instead the contractions stopped. Samuel has strong willed parents, I guess we couldn't expect him to be otherwise :P

That's pretty much what we've been doing for the past week, just waiting for Samuel to make his debut. My mom has been up here helping my brother Jayson move up to Utah. It's been really great having her here, she's helped with a ton of cooking and cleaning and getting everything ready for us. She's helped assemble our new dresser and glider, re-arrange our bedroom and replace a bunch of lightbulbs. I can't even begin to say how grateful I am for all the help she's given us. Thanks mom! I love you!! Unfortunately she's going to be leaving today barring the immediate arrival of her first grandson, since there are still 3 kids at home, plus an exchange student and my sister's fiancé. But we're so well prepared now that I think we'll be able to handle having a baby come home with us a lot more easily than we were before. I just wish she could get to reap the rewards and actually get to hold this baby before she leaves. Come on Samuel - SWIM DOWN!!

In conjunction with all of the projects that my mom has helped with, Eric came up with a great solution to a problem we've been having. See, our light fixture in our kitchen rattles a ridiculous amount whenever our upstairs neighbors are home. It hasn't bothered us too much, but it was a little disconcerting since it made it sound like the whole thing was going to fall off the ceiling. We realized however that it was just the metal rings around the bottom that were causing the rattling because they weren't secured to the glass tops. So, Eric came up with the idea of using rubber bands to reduce the amount of rattling. After a few different attempts he came up with this...


Rubber bands taped to the inside of the metal rings

The best part is, since he put those rubber bands in place last night... we haven't had a single rattle. You're the best honey!