No big news yet. However, the bags are packed and in the car. The baby car seat (a prerequisite for taking a baby home from the hospital) is installed and checked. Cell phones and cameras are charged (is the camera charged?) We’re pretty much on high alert, so I think it’s time to move to DEFCON 3.

Diana’s doing fine. Getting out of bed is a little difficult, but once she’s up and around she seems fine. She reports feel more internal pressure, and generally feels like things are getting close (although, this being our first time, it’s hard to know what feelings mean what). Her official due date is a little over a week from now, so sometime, anytime, soon, it’s on like Donkey Kong.

For my own part, I’m excited. I’m ready. I have the usual pre-game jitters, but I’m confident and feel that all systems are go. (Remind me to read this in a couple weeks, I wonder how it will sound to me then. :) I actually have a lot of feelings going on right now, and so many open questions about how my life will change. We’re kind of driving off the edge of a Thomas Guide map, and the only thing we have for directions are some pamphlets and scribbled notes written on coffee napkins. It’s thrilling and scary and mysterious altogether.

A while back Diana bought some decorations for the baby room, including stickers that stick on walls. Some of those stickers were alphabet stickers, where the letters have a picture on it of a thing beginning with the letter. The Z has a zebra on it, the M has a magnet, etc. As a test, she peeled off the “A” sticker and stuck it on the wall to see how it worked. Then she peeled the lower case “a” sticker and stuck it to some furniture, to test how they stuck on that surface. And for a time, we just left it at that. At some point my Iwan and Little Buhr came over and saw the A’s on the wall, and became convinced that we’d chosen a name beginning with “A”. Now every time we see them, they say “Good luck with little Amanda, Alyssa, Amy, Adrianna….” Funny stuff. They crack me up.