You have made it to 39 weeks! I’m so happy for you and excited to meet you! This week, you are the size of a small watermelon, but I cannot imagine a watermelon inside me. Watermelons are round and smooth (and delicious) and you are full of movement and joy! It’s incredible to feel your little feet or your knees or sweet little bottom pressed up against me. I can’t wait for you to come out here so we can see you and hold you and smell your sweet baby smell.

Here are the official 39 week photos:

Also, I might look like the above photo, but I feel like this:

So you can come out anytime! As we know from Ecclesiastes (or the Byrds) “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” We are learning to be patient as we await your arrival because we know the Lord has picked the perfect day for your birthday.

And here is a photo of you and your Dad from this morning. You LOVE it when he talks to you, reads you stories or plays games with you and I just know you’ll be great friends (and if you’re a girl, you’ll have him wrapped around your finger).

This week has been a little different for us. No more going to work during the day and getting things done. Instead, we’ve met friends for lunch, cleaned up the house a little, organized the guestroom for your Grandma McPherson’s arrival, read some books and generally rested. It’s going to be weird for me to not go to work again in the near future, but I’m oh so excited to spend my days with you; we’ll have adventures, explore God’s creation and I am honored to be part of each day to watch you grow and learn!

Happy 39 weeks sweet baby Champ! We can’t wait to meet you!

Love,
Your Mom

Here’s Kelly and Champ at 38 weeks! Champ seems to be having a great time in there and so far shows no signs of wanting to come out any time soon. We’ve also started flip-flopping on whether we think Champ is a boy or a girl and giving the child pep talks to encourage him or her to come visit us in the great wide world outside.

Champ has started following my hand across my belly with little kicks this week. It’s so cute! Jonathan tried it last night and had the same result!

Champ, we CAN’T WAIT TO MEET YOU! Please come out soon, but not today. Today, there’s work to be done at work.

Happy Wednesday!

We’re at 37 weeks! Champ is now offically full-term and can come at any time. We made a birth plan with our doula this week and we’re putting together bags of things we’ll take to the hospital on the big day. Now it’s just a matter of waiting–will Champ’s birthday be tomorrow, or in a month?

Another friend is doing a bit of a fundraiser for them–if you’re interested in helping them out, or if you just want a shot at a bag of sweet gift cards, head on over here to get tickets.

Howertons, we’re very excited for you!

We’re at 36 weeks now and just 1 month from Champ’s due date! We had our last childbirth class this week, and in about an hour we’re going to a small workshop that will teach us how to properly install our new car seat. (I, Jonathan, have already installed it, but this is the sort of thing that you don’t take chances with.)

I picked up this book because it had so many literary accolades, and because I am an absolute sucker for post-apocalyptic stories.

I had a hard time with the first ten pages. Cormac’s writing style can be hard to get past; it feels like something that should have received a C- in a high school creative writing class. The book is written in choppy, stream-of-consciousness sentences that are often fragments or run-ons, and the author gleefully omits punctuation and jams words together in a way that makes you sure he’s trying to increase your sense of unease just by making the words look wrong on the page. 

But then I got sucked in. The storyline is very simple, so simple that I didn’t believe it when I read it on the back cover. It is the story of a man and his son–both unnamed–walking through a barren, desolate, and cold America, just trying to stay alive and reach their destination. The terrors they encounter along the way are nightmarishly surreal–bands of starving people, unrelenting cold, forests of trees just falling down. The constant danger left me jittery and completely unable to put the book down; I finished it in a couple of nights.

The professional literary types say that this book is about hope, and three-quarters of the way through the book you’ll be wondering if there’s a shred of it anywhere in the bleak text. But there is: the father and his son exemplify a kind of transcendental hope that is completely separated from reason and circumstance. You could say that it’s hope in its most pure form or hope in its most foolish form, but it’s unquestionably hope, and an examination of what it means when it is, literally, all you’ve got.

There’s also a good dose of morality here, not in the preachy sense, but in the sense that makes you feel a little twinge in your gut at some of the hard choices faced by the protagonists. The right thing to do isn’t always obvious, and sometimes they don’t do it.

In the end I liked this book, but I can’t recommend it to you unless you have a high tolerance for sorrow, horribly disturbing images, and selfless love.

Recipes shows you all the blog posts that have recipes.

Photos shows some of the photos we have posted lately and also includes a link to all the blog posts that have photos.

Enjoy!

Here’s Kelly looking great at 35 weeks! It’s just over a month now until Champ’s due date. The baby has a car seat and a crib now and we’re learning everything we can about how to take care of him or her after the big day!

I saw this today and thought of you, Jonathan and Mom. I thought you’d enjoy it. I know you’ll enjoy it even more if you’re drinking a nice, hot cup of black coffee while you read it. Okay, click here for the list.

Any other coffee lovers out there? How do you take your coffee? Me, I enjoy a little milk and some sugar in the raw. So far, I have not been able to drink black coffee and enjoy it.