Baby Shower

Things are done a bit differently around here, and I have certainly never heard of a baby shower in this country. There are just so many babies and not enough money that I think baby showers are not customary. I had just accepted that I would not have a baby shower. This made me sad, but I figured getting my hopes up would just disappoint me.

However, our wonderful American friends knew that a baby needs to be celebrated. So, they threw us a baby shower (a bilingual baby shower)! It was a complete surprise. It was a hot, rainy Sunday afterno

on and my friend lives on the 5th floor, so when we arrived a bit late for what I thought was a get-together I was all apologizes. Then I looked over and saw a pink and blue table with goodies on it and my local friends surrounding it, and behind the table was a sign that said "Welcome Baby Brown." I could not believe it. I was stunned. If you know me, it is not hard to pull one over my head, but I still could not believe that my friends would go through the trouble.

We had pink and blue cupcakes, finger sandwiches, and other goodies. They even filled a basket with baby lotion, diapers, a

nd toys. We played typical baby shower games, including one that has determined that our baby is a girl named Trecarya Heather Brown, has hazel eyes, blonde curly hair and will be a flight attendant scientist.

Today I am at 22 weeks. The baby kicks a lot and has its own schedule for how things are done. I visited the doctor this week and she said the baby is healthy, on schedule, and I am gaining weight as I should be (So please no one tell me I need to gain more weight. I hear it daily from every female who has had a baby or will have a baby and they are everywhere).

 

Lastly, as you can probably tell from the photos, I cut

 my hair.  All the baby books told me not to do anything drastic to my hair, that it won't make me look like I am not pregnant or feel better about myself.  I did not listen, and I thought I was the exception for the rule.  Turns out a new haircut will not make you feel less pregnant or make you feel better about yourself.  Also, the hair stylist here have a inability to cut one side of the hair at the same length as the other.  So, I have now 

gotten 3 haircuts in the past month (none of the above photos show the most recent one - it is shorter now) in efforts to correct the attempts by the previous genius who whacked at it.  I am probably going to grow it out since my longer hair was a lot less stressful to maintain then this, but I guess I needed to learn the lesson for myself.

We miss you all.  KB and L

Busy Month

We love receiving boxes, especially big ones!!!  One of KB's good friends from college got some of her friends together to send us the biggest box we have ever received.  Unfortunately Toby also enjoyed one of the delicious gravy packets, resulting in the included bath photo.

We have been trying to be busy getting ready for the baby.  We start school next week and so we want to get most everything done before that begins.  It did not look like much would get done though since things either move really fast here or extremely slow.  Well just last night, we got a call that a painter was available to paint the baby's room (It is like a putty paint that you smear onto the walls with a spatula, something that other foreigners have encouraged us to not consider doing on our own).  Then also last night the carpenter came by to measure for new doors in the baby's room (Toby is able to open the sliding doors himself, so I have reason to believer our kid could do it too).  Most amazingly, the factory that has been building the furniture we ordered in JANUARY called and said they wanted to deliver our furniture last night.  Everything is happening all at once.  

We still have a lot to do, and order, and make, and let other's make, but it is nice to see something happening in the future baby's room other than just a baby bed.  

On a sad note, a couple of our foreign friends who have been here since before we arrived are leaving our city in the next couple of weeks.  There will be no foreign ladies here at all after they leave, and they were really special to us.