We’ve been shopping at Lowes Foods for a couple of years now. They have a promotion where they’ll give you “S&H Greenpoints” for spending money on groceries.
After a couple of years, we’d earned up a fair number of points, so we traded some of them in for an infant car seat. Not too bad - one less thing we have to buy!
Yesterday, we saw Holly’s belly moving with the baby’s kicks.
Even though we knew it was coming, it’s still pretty weird to see the shakes, tremors, and thuds coming from inside my bride’s gut. Usually, that only happens when we hit Taco Bell…. 
Pretty busy few days.
Thanks to Holly’s bad influence, I picked up a shiny new PowerMac this weekend from the Apple Store at Southpoint. We rationalized it by thinking that this will be the last big toy purchase I get to make until Hayley graduates from college, so I should make it count. It’s got the requisite DVD burner, so I’ll be able to take those future home movies from the camcorder and burn them onto DVD. Until then, of course, it’s all mine! Buah ha ha ha! 
We had our monthly OB/GYN visit today. It’s getting to be pretty much routine now - go in, listen to the heartbeat (a solid 140bpm today), and go home. Everything’s going according to schedule, which is good, and Holly’s finally starting to put on some weight, which made her doctor happy.
They also gave her a 10-ounce bottle of “Glucola” - a sugar drink to test for gestational diabetes. From all the stories I’ve heard, it’s a pretty nasty drink, but if the test turns out fine, that should be the only time we have to mess with it. We have to keep it in the fridge until next month’s visit, where Holly has to chug it an hour before the appointment so they can test her blood.
Now that we’ve got the nursery painted, baby registry time is in full gear. We registered online for one at Babies ‘R’ Us, so if you’re looking at something for the baby, feel free to check there.
On the website front, I changed the “time remaining” thing at the top of the page to give the time in weeks and days, in addition to just days. That more closely matches the way everyone talks about the pregnancy.
So Best Buy was offering 12-month, no-interest financing jim-jammy this week, so we bit the bullet and got me a new toy. So on top of the iMac and PlayStation2, I’ve now got a spiffy new Canon ZR40 Digital Camcorder.
It’s for the baby, of course.
The coolest thing is that I can import the video from the camera onto my iMac, do some neat edits with iMovie, and then save the resulting video as a QuickTime file for email or web use, copy it back out to a VCR via the camera to give to friends and family, and (if I end up getting a new Mac with a DVD burner), burn it out to DVD. It’s good to be the daddy.
Nothing else really new on the baby front. Hayley’s already showing that she’s not going to listen to me by usually ceasing all kicking when I put a hand on Holly’s tummy. I’ve felt her a couple of times in the past few days, so she’s still moving around in there. We go for our monthly checkup on Wednesday.
Now that it’s football season, I know we’re into the home stretch of the pregnancy. Hayley’s due-date of January 16 should be right in the middle of the NFL playoffs. When the NFL season winds down, I better start getting the hospital bags ready.
Well, we got the nursery painted today! 
It was a solid day of work, but we managed to get everything done. I did most of the major painting, and Holly came in for the detail work. You may not be able to tell from the picture above, but the walls are now a fairly pale yellow.
We also got a new coat of white paint on the ceiling, which had turned kind of a dingy brown. 
This picture should give a better indication of what the color is.
We also got the blinds up, curtain rods attached, and valances hung. On the furniture front, we got Holly’s glide rocker. It’s still in the box - that’s another project for another day. Beth’s changing table is still up in the attic - we’ll need to pull that down soon and get it cleaned up. It’s pretty dirty from being stored at her house for a while, and sitting in our attic for the last year or so.
All in all, a very long, productive, and tiring day for my newly-27-year-old self.
We spent Labor Day weekend prepping the former guest room for conversion into the nursery. We moved the chest-of-drawers into our bedroom, and the bed and dresser into the computer room, which is now a lot smaller. The nursery is strangely empty now. 
We’re planning on repainting the nursery this coming weekend (the family that lived here before were pretty heavy smokers, so the walls are a bit, er, yellow), and doing the nursery up in a “Sleepytime Baby Snoopy” theme. I’ve always been a big Peanuts fan, and Peanuts is something a little unusual, yet cool at the same time. Now, we just need some baby furniture to put in there…
We felt Hayley’s first kicks from the outside today! We were sitting on the couch, and Holly says “Put your hand here, quick!” and grabs my hand and places it on her belly.
Sure enough, I soon feel a distinctive “thump” on my hand from beneath. I get two or three more kicks before Hayley gets bored and goes back to sleep, or something.
That was cool.