November 19th - Ikea is cool, and things get complicated (but doable).

Ikea rocks. Seriously. All you furniture-buying people who are moving into dorms, apartments, houses, or like us, just trying to replace the hand-me-down-hideous tables in your life, look no further. We kicked ourselves for having bought an (actually very nice) pine TV amoire at Wal-Mart over a year ago.
We went yesterday to the South Philadelphia Ikea to see if we could replace the dark oak, glass-top, baby-disaster-waiting-to-happen-and-ugly-too coffee & end tables that we got from Bob's grandparents when we moved into this house. Bob's mom came along (ok, brought us along because there was no way those tables were fitting in our car, and we needed their van) to buy two corner cabinets for her dining room. We walked through the whole store, looked, drooled, oohed, and ahhed over everything. I gotta tell ya, the Swedish, they know how to do retail. Everything just makes so much sense there! If you've never been to an Ikea - and I thought everybody had but apparently not! - you walk through the top floor and it's all a showroom, with tons of rooms set up showcasing all their furniture and products, even full furnished apartments, and you just make a note of what products you like. Then you go down to the 'marketplace' and pick up the products you want. The furniture is very sleek and practical, some more modern that I like, but they have tons of stuff that's just gorgeous. If you want any big furniture, you continue into their warehouse, which is huge, clean, and ridiculously well-organized. You can use real people or a touch-screen computer to find your piece of furniture, and you'll find out what row and 'bin' it's stored in. Most of their furniture requires assembly, but nothing very difficult (Bob put together the 5 pieces we bought in less than 2 hours). It was awesome.
We got a new coffee table - higher, all wood, with basket slots underneath. We now have more storage in the coffee table than we need, and it's really cute. We got a cute little pedestal table for the end of the couch ($19.99!) and a 3-table set to put at the top of the stairs. The main table has a cute drawer, and the other two work as a bench and a footstool/child's bench. Love, love, love it. I also saw my dining room table and chairs (next year, perhaps?).
We had lunch at the Ikea's restaurant, which was actually much better than it sounded. I had lured Bob to Ikea with promises of Swedish meatballs, anyway. And I ate a meager salad so I could have APPLE CAKE with vanilla sauce for dessert. Dah-am.
We got home and Bobby assembled all the furniture and we put the old stuff up in storage. And Max shredded all the cardboard all over the living room and ended up getting sick, but he had fun. A good time was had by all. Long live Ikea.
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And here's where it all starts to get complicated:

Mom WAS staying at a hotel. Sis was visiting (hotel) when baby was born. Dad was staying in California, getting a call, a million pictures, and a nice video as soon as possible. Bob's family was getting called to come and meet the kiddo. It was all going to be so simple...

Now, I'm not unhappy about how this is all supposedly going to go down, but it's definitely more complicated now, more stress-inducing, and frankly, do I need that?

Officially (unofficially until that day) getting induced on Friday morning, November 24th. Our hospital report time is 10 AM. That could change depending on the amount of other laboring moms there that morning, plus there's always the 'condition' I'm in. Monday we get out 'internal exam', which I won't go into except to say that it sounds like it makes the dreaded pap smear seem downright impersonal. We'll see how ready we are for labor then, and that might change my report time too; they might need to get me there earlier to get my started.

My mom and sister are now coming for Thanksgiving, which is cool, having them here with Bob's family. They might as well, either way, we'll either have or will be having a baby very near that date. Mom and Cait were originally going to stay at a hotel, to avoid stress on us, but we later asked Mom to stay here so she could take care of Max while we're at the hospital. She and Cait need separate rooms, apparently, so I have to get 2 rooms ready for guests.

And Dad is flying in on Friday morning, which I am unbelievably thrilled about. I feel awful that he'll hardly get to see my kids, I can't believe the good luck of her induction date hitting a school vacation and him being able to get a flight. He'll be here Friday, EARLY, and he'll need a room. Yes, my father is staying here too - my in-laws said he could stay in their guest room, but he said here would be fine, as long as my mom's ok with it. She says it's 'fine'. We'll see. (Parents had a very messy divorce 5 years ago. We'll see how this goes...) So 3 rooms of our house have guests in them this coming weekend. Hello cleaning.
What if I go into labor today and he misses the birth? Well, will he come anyway or not? I have no idea. I HOPE he would, but who knows, he might be able to get his money back on the flight... and I'd feel like I cheated him out of seeing his granddaughter on the day she was born. *sigh*
(I know, stupid, but I would.)

And they all want to go to the hospital with us, right from the get-go. Don't care how long it takes. This didn't stick well with me. Something about my mom, dad, sister, and I guess all of Bob's family waiting and waiting and WAITING for my body to hurry up and do something while they sit uncomfortably in a little waiting room for potentially DAYS...no pressure. Ha. Ha.


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On the other hand, it could all go out the window...getting majorly crampy...OW ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow owow