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Random cute baby shot. This was taken last week sometime. The very well-loved bear on the left was given to me by my brother when I was about ten. He had broken up with his girlfriend just before Christmas and after he had already bought her a present, so the bear came to me. (Destiny.) I love that bear. The bear on the right is a newer addition--M bought it for me when he bought my engagement/wedding (diamond) ring. Proceeds went to some charity, I think. In any case, they graciously agreed to pose for the camera with the little duckling. And my leg. (There are a few new photos in the gallery.)

Speaking of my legs, they are almost! back where they were before The Swelling! My feet, too! It feels sooo good. They look tiny and strange! My fingers are still swollen, but I can wear one of my rings. I'm trying not to get concerned about the other one yet because my hands still feel swollen--surely my fingers haven't grown permanently. I have lost all but five pounds of my pregnancy weight, and that impresses the hell out of me because I gained fifty. Fifty! That's about ten more than I was admitting to in the last week or two, but I was seriously very swollen so I think that explains a lot of it. And there was almost ten pounds of baby, of course.

I have now had my first week at home alone with the baby. It has been hard but I have muddled through. You know, when you envision staying home with your kids? You kind of envision a smiling, happy baby, or at least I did. Newborns? They aren't particularly happy creatures. It's not that Evelyn is discontent at all. I think I must have one of the calmest babies ever. It's just that when you have all of their needs taken care of, it's not like they SMILE at you (on purpose) or anything to let you know that things are okay. And when something is wrong, it's basically trial and error to fix it because there are no clues as to what might they might want, except for feeding and diaper changes. I'm not complaining by any means because we have seriously lucked out on the easy baby thing so far. I'm just saying that I am looking forward to the time when I can talk to her and see some sort of recognition that I am there.

It is becoming slightly less scary to think of taking her places. I took her to my job on Friday morning--my boss is retiring and it was her last day, so I had to go this week or I'd miss her. She was asleep the entire time but I'm sure she enjoyed being oohed over. And I got to dress her up before I took her! See photo at right. She is mainly wearing sleepers at home. She does NOT like being cold, so outfits without sleeves or feet are generally more trouble than they're worth. I am feeling angsty about all the adorable clothes that she's not wearing, though. So many cute things, so little time.

Today, by the way, is my official due date, and Evelyn's two-week birthday. It is also the first semi-normal day that we've had together--the sort of day that has not focused solely on Baby. We did the weekend shopping errands, and started on a big sunroom clean-up project. When our bedrooms got rearranged to prepare for the nursery, we took all of the junk that we didn't know what to do with from all of the rooms (especially the former guest room, which is where we were mainly putting stuff we didn't know what to do with to begin with) and stuck it all in the sunroom. It made sense at the time because there was furniture piled up in there too, and besides that, it is basically where all of our excess furniture had gone to die anyway. Then M painted and moved out most of the furniture, just leaving the mattresses leaned up against the windows. When my parents came down on my birthday and spent the night, they decided to just throw the bed back together out there, in the center of the room. Since then, the bed has gotten quite a bit more use, and we're planning on leaving it where it is for as long as we can expect regular company, so it was time to set it up properly, and while we're at it, we have a series of let's-move-this-over-there changes. You know. You think of moving one piece of furniture to another room or location, but it requires that you move something else, which has a lot of things on top of it, which means they all have to be moved, but then you have to move that other thing, too, and clean underneath it while you're at it. We do this a lot. We do it a lot because we're too freaking cheap to buy furniture we really like, I think, so we make do with what we have and promise that eventually we'll get around to it. I mean, we've only been married for six and a half years. Why would we bother with buying furniture? Anyway, we made some progress and we have two more days to get things done before M goes back to work. Memorial Day rocks.