A quick note

I made it!  After stressing out and annoying everyone I know with my negative predictions of having the baby weeks early in my car, my beautiful baby boy came after a calm induction in a hospital bed with the doctor, nurses, my husband and my mom all present.  So thanks for bearing with all my doom and gloom!  Here's a peek at the little guy:

Scattered thoughts

I am in the final stretch of pregnancy, and I have a confession to make.  Feeling huge and uncomfortable and tired all the time makes me super grumpy.  So in order to not be a completely horrible mother, I am going to do a tiny bit of ranting and then play the glad game.

1.  Clearly my new child will not be named Bronco.  BYU did NOT beat Utah.  In fact, they didn't even really show up at the game.  They seemed to have been replaced by a pee wee team.  The good news is that they found their way back to the field against CFU.  They may even show up tomorrow against Utah State (fingers crossed).  But I'm still not naming my kid after one of them, even Bronco Mendenhall, who I think is an awesome coach.  It's just not the season to do it.

2.  You can spend a boatload of money on super fast internet, Netflix streaming (don't get me started on Netflix, though), a fancy modem, and a computer that works really well, but if your wireless router is a piece of crap, you have just flushed all the money you spent down the toilet.  And, after sitting through reload after reload while trying to stream Netflix and not having working internet on my computer half the time, I am ready to spend whatever it takes to get things working.

3.  On that same note, I'm pretty sure all the technology in our house is plotting against me.  It's like everything electrical has decided to make it impossible for me to just be a bum for the last few days before this baby pops out.  All the Wii remotes' batteries died at the same time, which seemed so unlikely that I blamed it on the Wii going on the fritz and spent 2 days not streaming from it.  The DVR remote has decided to give me a 10 second delay after pushing buttons.  This test of patience is not fair to someone that just wants to find out who got the boot from ANTM before going to bed.  The Blu-ray player decided that the delay was hilarious and took a full minute to get to the Toy Story 3 menu after selecting the English option while my 3-year-old kept yelling, "WHERE IS TOY STORY???"  The laptop seems to be doing fine, but the website for the elementary school that lists their phone number won't load, no matter how many ways I try to type it in.  I just need to be able to call the school when the baby comes so Jacob knows who's picking him up from school.  At least my new phone is working, knock on wood.

Now for the glad game:
1.  4 days until my induction.  So far so good.  There is the chance that I will make it to the hospital, get painkillers (yay!), and have a much calmer experience having this baby.  I am thrilled.

2.  This weekend is General Conference.  I love Conference weekend for so many reasons:  1. the chance to sit and listen to the Prophet and other fantastic church leaders, 2. the chance to stay in my PJs all weekend, 3. a weekend off from church callings, which for me means a Sunday where I'm not hashing through the hymns painfully while the Relief Society tries very hard to smile politely and figure out what the real melody should be, 4.  This time, it means guilt-free couch lounging all weekend before bringing home a baby.  And really, it's nice to be spiritually fed without having to wear a dress.  There's nothing bad about conference weekend.

3.  Psych is coming back on soon.  Hooray for Shawn and Gus!

4.  There's a new episode of Vampire Diaries tonight.  How can anything be too rough when you have that to look forward to?  Thursday nights really are the best.  Fingers crossed that technology won't mess this one up!

Okay.  I'm feeling a lot calmer and less prone to cussing now.  Thanks for bearing with me while I get it all out.

How to pass the time

I am reaching the point where I'm counting down to the day this baby comes out.  And when you start counting down, things slow WAY down.  It's the worst kind of torture.  And it's hard to count down to something that could happen tomorrow or in 3 weeks.  It was in this frame of mind that I clicked on my wish list on Amazon and rashly ordered the first 2 seasons of Vampire Diaries on DVD.  It wasn't really that rash.  I had just read an article about how just about everything on my instant streaming queue was going to disappear in February.  Also, I was getting excited about the season premiere that's happening Thursday.  The point is, now I have 2 seasons of excellent vampire fun to watch to pass the slow days until I have this baby.  It's one of the many ways I am trying to pass the time until the blessed event.  Here are some other things I'm doing to make the days seem shorter:

--watching a whole lot of food network and thinking about how awesome it would be if I made dishes like that for my family, then making mac'n'cheese.
--planning baby announcements and thinking about the places I need to go to get supplies.
--reading all those books on my shelves I've wondered about.
--building stuff with Legos, and then having my toddler tell me that is NOT a good spaceship.
--getting on facebook 500 times a day to see what thoughts are passing through everyone's heads.
--playing Angry Birds Rio on my cell phone.
--doing crossword puzzles on my cell phone.
--counting down to the next BYU football game (please beat Utah this week.  For me.  I will name my child Bronco.)

Things I'm NOT doing to pass the time:
--laundry
--mopping
--cooking (mac'n'cheese, remember?)
--making my bed
--vacuuming
--the dishes
--clipping all those coupons that are sitting, untouched, in my growing pile of Sunday newspapers

Yeah, I'm sitting in a pig sty on my couch, deepening that butt groove while I wait for this baby to come out. Don't get me wrong.  I still get down on the floor and play with my toddler and read books to him and all those other motherly things.  We just don't get far from that couch.  So, how do you pass the time when you're tired and huge?

Eating my words

Target has pulled through for me again.  Why, oh why can't they build one closer to my house?  It would have saved me hours of searching at other, far inferior stores.  Well, maybe not hours, but half an hour at Walmart is the same as 4 hours at a good store.  I gathered my energy and headed straight to Target this morning.  And they had options!  They had newborn sized sleepers, newborn sized outfits, a newborn sized little snuggie thing that looks like it will actually keep the baby warm, and a bunch of other accessories for BOYS.  Yes, baby boys.  Someone remembered that, even if boys don't wear cute things like bows and sparkles, they still need to be clothed.  So a huge shout-out to Target.  Now I have another reason for it to be my happy place.  (They have also retained their maternity department, unlike Shopko and Walmart.)

Another search

Remember when I did a post whining about the disappearance of maternity clothes in almost every store?  I'm pretty sure those same great fetchers are also removing all baby boy clothes from the stores.  Seriously.  After having gone to Park City, the University Mall in Orem, and Walmart in search of some new clothes for my upcoming bundle of joy, I have a total of 3 newborn sized sleepers and 2 packs of newborn sized onesies.  I just want to find something to put my baby in for his first few months until he fits into the 0-3 month clothes, which seem to be the size of choice at Walmart (for the 3 outfits and/or sleepers they actually carry).  I have all three of those outfits.  Don't get me wrong.  There are PLENTY of baby clothes at the store.  It's just that they are all pink and flowery and super duper cute.  I happen to know 6 women (including myself) that are expecting baby boys in the next few months.  So it's not like there's a shortage of boys around.  They still need clothing, and I'm certainly not putting my little guy in a pink sleeper.  Is there anyone out there that has found a secret stash of baby boy sleepers I can buy?  I swear 3 years ago there were plenty of baby boy clothes.  So they have to have gone somewhere.  They are probably in the same place as all those maternity clothes that have vanished.

Why Facebook is a good idea

I admit, at first I thought Facebook was kind of ridiculous.  I don't need to know everything everyone is up to.  For example, the whole world doesn't really need to know that you just flushed the toilet.  Or that you had a cheese sandwich for lunch.  This is partly the reason I haven't even touched Twitter.  But as I've spent more and more time on Facebook, I have discovered a few joys that exist because it exists:

1.  Sometimes it's nice to complain about something, like people who shoot ahead to the end of a merging lane to butt in front of those of us who got over a half a mile ago when we saw the "lane ends" sign.  Then you get 20 comments by people who agree with you.  It makes you feel more justified in your indignance.

2.  Sometimes people write hilarious things about life, a lot of which are about their kids.  It's nice to know that other moms have 2-year-olds that do crazy things, and it makes it easier to laugh at my own situation.

3.  Without Facebook, how would I have gotten a gazillion birthday wishes from friends and family?  Let's put it this way:  I got one phone call for my birthday today, and at least 35 birthday wishes on Facebook.  Every 5 minutes I got notifications on my phone wishing me a great day.  Who doesn't feel showered with love after a birthday like that?

And that, my friends, is why I love Facebook.

Harry Potter 7.2

So...I have already complained about the audience at the movie theater the night I saw Harry Potter, but I haven't said anything about what I thought of the movie.  I can't be too detailed about it at this point, because I have prego brain and can't remember details all that well.  I plan on seeing it again, but I thought I'd let you know what my overall impressions were.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Stuff that I didn't love
Changes that were made  Movies are different than books.  Things that work in books don't always work in movies.  So I try very hard to keep an open mind when there are deviations from the book.  However, there were a few things that were different from the book that I thought should have stayed the same.  Harry and Voldemort's final battle takes place in the Great Hall in the book, with the entire wizarding community watching.  It seems pretty important to me that everyone sees Harry finally defeat Voldemort for good.  In the movie, though, they duke it out in the courtyard while everyone's inside.  It makes it seem less significant, somehow.  One of my favorite parts of the book is when Mrs. Weasley takes out Bellatrix LeStrange.  This still happens in the movie, but I wanted it to be a longer battle with a little more oomph.  It seemed too minor to me.  Still, at least that wasn't left out, nor was Mrs. Weasley's line, which I won't quote, but it happens to be one of my favorite lines in the book and the movie.

Draco as an old guy  The rest of the cast looked pretty convincing as being 19 years older, considering the fact that the actors are almost that old anyway.  But putting a beard on Draco was just silly.  Laughable, really.

Stuff I loved
Everything else, but let's start with the emotional stuff  I'm sure there were other things I wished were different, but I can't remember what they are.  I do remember that I loved the way they handled Snape's memories.  Oh, how I cried.  I was biting back sobs.  It's because I read the book and knew what was coming.  I could barely handle the sadness and tragedy associated with Snape.  I also loved Harry's walk through the woods, when he's there with his parents and loved ones.  (Again with the sobs.)  The book describes the scene very clearly and very well, but seeing it on the big screen was even more moving to me.  I think that was the case for most of the movie, really.  Seeing Tonks and Lupin laid out, the Weasley family weeping over Fred's body, and Hogwarts in ruins made the fact that it was the last movie real.  And got the tears flowing even more.

Some of the funny moments that I appreciated because they lightened the tone:  Ron and Hermione making out after destroying the horcrux.  Hilarious.  And seriously, it's about time.  Also, Hermione as Bellatrix.  Helena Bonham Carter is one talented actress.  She does good girl trying to do evil witch so convincingly.  I also loved Harry pointing out that there was no need to plan, considering that none of their plans work anyway.  Good point, Harry.

Like I said, my memory is shot.  I like the movie a lot.  I can't wait to see it again.  Two enthusiastic thumbs up.