No, that is not a pumpkin under my shirt

It's a baby the size of a pumpkin.  I'm 38 weeks pregnant, and feeling every inch of my 43-inch belly.  Today is my last day of work before I start maternity leave tomorrow, so I'm just finishing up all my Lahash projects, replying to emails and talking to my grandma on the phone.

Our plan for the next few weeks:
Fred has been traveling for work for the past week and is still on the road.  I'm helping him with a grant writing proposal that we're both excited about.  He'll get back mid-day on Thursday (hopefully) and the proposal for a district-wide, community-driven program to care for vulnerable children is due on Friday.  After that gets submitted, I think we'll want to just sit and look at each other for a day or two!  Fred will be wrapping up his work projects and I'll be working on a few more sewing projects, then we'll pack up our baby clothes and get ready to head up to Kenya.

The trip north for the birth will hopefully be far less dramatic than our last trip, but will still take all day.  We'll probably hang out in Nairobi for a day or two, meeting with our American midwife and do some last minute baby shopping.  Then we'll catch the public transport out to Kijabe, about an hour from Nairobi and check into the guest house.  We'll have another appointment with the maternity staff and go over protocol for when I actually go into labor.  We'll be about 100 yards from the hospital reading and watching movies on a laptop waiting for the baby!  I'll probably be doing Facebook status updates, and once the baby arrives, we'll be sure to announce it here.

Please pray for us as we're getting close to meeting our little one.  Pray for our safety as we travel and health for me and for the baby.  I might even go out on a limb and ask you to pray for comfort...not luxury, just comfort.  The uncomfortable buses and having to pee when there's no bathroom and sharing a hotel room with cockroaches or rats make for good blog posts, but I'd much prefer to not have any of those stories at this particular juncture.  (In Fred's defense, the number of hotel rooms I've shared with cockroaches has reduced drastically since getting married.  He takes good care of me.)

Anyway, thanks for following the blog, listening to my crazy stories and praying for us.  Let the Baby Watch officially begin!