April Showers...

Well, hopefully this year April showers bring May babies, but that's beside the point.  :)

Right now I've just seen some friends off and am getting around to cleaning the house again.  I have a feeling this will be a routine.  We're trying to get some room to move furniture around and having a clean house helps that, though that means you clean your house a lot.  Our friends flew in Friday which also happened to be the last day I worked at the cafe.  I'm working on transitioning to getting enough done before Ripley gets here that I'm not super frantic when that happens.  As Chris says, I'm also working on growing a Ripley, which takes a surprising amount of energy at this stage.  I'm not sure I've ever been such a fan of my bed and hated an alarm clock more. 

Cleaning up after the shower...

The past week and change though have been fairly uneventful.  My friend from Arizona (Emily) got together with Linda and they had a very nice small shower for me on Saturday.  We had about six ladies here and it was a lot of fun to both play the games and see the people.  I also got a few more items of clothing, so not as worried about having a naked baby anymore.  I know that after Ripley comes and we know gender it will be significantly easier to shop for clothes, but if an infant is going to go through multiple changes of clothes in a day, then I've got about a day or twos worth of clothes for different stages currently.  The really really cool thing though is that Emily found a bakery here that made cupcakes for me!  They were kind of a pain to work with, but once we got the cupcakes they were FANTASTIC!  I've been eating them off and on for days now and no new symptoms so Ripley is either really suppressing my immune system, or they made them right. :)  Maybe I'll look at getting a job there when I have to go back to work, though that could be really really dangerous. 

On Sunday we went to the MSI.  We got to see Body Worlds, the cycle of life.  It is the premier of the exhibit and was pretty cool.  There were some interesting poses and as it was when we got married, it was interesting to see the different parts of the body "melted" away and only have part of it remain.  A few pictures from our trip:

In the U-505 exhibit, we're ready to enlist in the Waves

Chris and Rick (Emily's husband) playing with the anti-aircraft gun replica and trying to figure out how to make it a working gun...

We tried to kind of relax on Monday and just hung around downtown Naperville.  Yesterday we went to downtown Chicago and did a fair amount of walking around.  We walked through the loop to the lake from Union Station and then up Michigan to Navy Pier.  We stopped at the bean and then at the Chicago Cultural Center.  The Center had an interesting exhibit titled, "Off the Beaten Path" which is about women and domestic violence throughout the world.  There were several pieces simply done by women from countries that traditionally are very downgrading to women -- like Pakistan, Iran, etc.  My favorite piece was probably done by a Swedish artist and essentially had pictures of beautiful roses sewn shut.  The sewing was to demonstrate female genital mutilation that is often done to exterior female genitalia.  It was done for Amnesty International, but it was an interesting piece.  The other interesting piece was one where they gave the women of an African village cameras.  They women took pictures as they went about their lives and then with some of the pictures there was commentary on the pictures.  The commentary explained how much control the men had over the women -- and it was shocking.  After we went to the Cultural Center we continued walking up Michigan.  We got to Navy Pier and I finally managed to go on an architecture tour, as Emily thought it would be fun!  It was fun, with the exception of it being cold.  We had a nice wind and were out on the water, so both Emily and I turned blue.  There was only one company giving tours this early, and I don't recommend using them for an architecture tour if you come to town.  It was the Shoreline Tour company and it despite it being cold they didn't really talk much about the architecture.  Well, at least not as much as I would have liked.  They explained the basics of the styles, but I remember the tour guide trying to make lame jokes throughout the trip more than anything else.  At the end of the day we ended up at the Hancock tower getting drinks and looking out over the town without much wind.  As always, it was fun to play tourist and give people a "one day snapshot" of Chicago.  Rick and Emily decided that more than one day was needed to see everything, and that they'd come back and see us.  :) 

Anyway, back to that cleaning thing -- I've got laundry to fold and get through the washer and dryer, and some vacuuming to do.  Later today we also have our 34 week OB appointment, so we'll get to listen to Ripley's stats.  Currently Ripley likes to get hic-ups and so that's entertaining to watch.  They also help tell me how "low" Ripley is, and definitely not in the birthing position.  We'll see what happens in the next few weeks -- we've only got about six left before d-day.