My sister's birthday

Happy Birthday, Kristen! No little nephew to share it with you today, though. Shouldn't be too far off though.

I spent the morning finishing up the online tutorial for school. This time participating in the practice live classroom session. I'm all set now for how to take a class online when the time comes.

Today was big auto thursday. Donavon took the car for maintenance. Last time we were in they scheduled us automatically for a 9 month checkup on Dec 17th. We laughed and assured them we would be in a little sooner, what with a Dec 16th due date.

Then we had the car seat reinstalled. Yes, we had this done once before by a certified installer at a store. (Recall the video of her standing on our car seat base to get it to work and then proclaiming that she had discovered the 'trick' with our car's seat belt.) After an hour and $25 and a lot of her struggling with different contraptions, she thought it was figured out. By the time we had driven home, the base was crooked and loose. It just looked bad. We found a good reference at www.seatcheck.org with state certified, official inspectors and installers. We were much relieved to go yesterday and deal with a serious professional. She recognized that our base wasn't leveled properly (which the previous installer said she could just eyeball due to years of instinct) which had made the standard installation so difficult for the first person. She also informed us that the cute little sherpa snuggly, the headrest and the mirror we had installed to watch our kid were all instruments of death. Good news is the seat is safely installed and we're, um, in contact with the person who did the first salesjob, I mean installation, for us.

Other than that, it was another quiet day around here. We are sort of getting the house ready for my sister and her family who are visiting for the weekend. Sort of. And our friend Maxine called, checking in, offering lots of kind words of support and excitement and answering a few parenting questions. Very sweet.

D and I had a good heart to heart that reminds me why we are so good together. I didn't find time to practice much birth stuff today, so I'll just fall asleep to the CD. (Not really what you are supposed to do but I believe better than nothing...) Early bedtime (10ish?) since I slept pretty poorly last night.