7th inning stretch!

I've decided to title this next 1.5 weeks in our life the "7th inning stretch", which may only serve to show how little I know about baseball.  With a little less than 4 weeks until baby girl is due, we've got a lot to do in the next little bit of time, only to hurry up and wait soon after that.  Of course, most of the reason we are rushing to be done by next Friday is my own "like to be prepared extra early" personality, which Mario thankfully very cheerfully puts up with.  (He does get a lot of fun stories and jokes out of these occasions though.)  This is reminiscent to me of when we traveled to Chicago for Thanksgiving last year, and were at the airport (at our gate even!) with about 4 hours to spare.  We'll be all ready for baby girl soon, and then if she doesn't arrive for 3 more weeks after that, at least we'll be ready! 

Mario is diligently working to prepare himself for CPA test #2, which is next Saturday.  He is very dedicated and spends a lot of time studying, even to the point where he dreams (studies?!?) in his sleep about accounting.  :)  I know he'll be happy to have some weekends and evenings slightly more free once the test is finished, and I've promised him I won't have a long "to-do" list waiting for him on the other side of the test. 

I've been working hard to organize and arrange the baby's room, which is slightly difficult right now since we haven't put her dresser in yet.  I'm hoping in the next couple days we'll get that done, and that will allow me to finally put the rest of her clothes away!  I think I've found a perfect place for everything, but Mario joked that he may need me to draw him a diagram of where everything goes in her room.  Maybe my system of organization isn't as easily understood as I thought...

In addition to baby things, we've had a contractor at our house this past week to fix a leak...that it turned out didn't exist!  We thought we had a leak in the wall between the master bathroom and the baby's room, but there was no leak up on further inspection (which required cutting holes in several of our walls and ceilings).  However, we may have a leak in our water heater in the garage, and a neighbor just told us this morning that we've got a burst water pipe in the street.  Our street gets broken water pipes frequently (about 1-2 times a year) but with 8 houses in our cul-de-sac, the breaks luckily haven't been in one of our pipes since we first bought the house almost 5 years ago.  Perfect timing that it would happen now, the week of Mario's test and less than a month before the baby is due!  We are trying to see how much excitement we can squeeze in these last couple weeks before she arrives and our lives change forever.  :)

Speaking of the baby, she is doing very well.  She is pretty well positioned with her head down and her feet either sticking in my ribs or out the right side of my stomach.  She also frequently gets the hiccups throughout the day, which I think is adorable.  I'm sure she probably isn't quite as amused.  :)  We are anxiously awaiting her arrival; we can't wait to see who she looks like! 

It is a rare, beautiful sunny day in Washington here (although still a bit chilly) and I'm going to enjoy the sunshine while it lasts.  Here are a couple of pictures taken over the last couple weeks: