35 6/7

Since my last posting, we have been trying to get a bit more organized, since this baby will be here in a little over 3 weeks! We went to Babies R'Us and bought what hopefully will be enough clothing and supplies to get us through 2 weeks in Alaska without doing daily laundry yet without requiring us to pack 3 extra suitcases to get home to Boston. It's very hard to figure out what exactly I need here, and what can wait until I get home. Despite being a pediatrician, I feel very clueless about the whole situation. The other thing that I've decided is really stupid is the cut off between newborn items and size 1- it's around 8 pounds, and so many newborns are around 8 pounds. Why couldn't they have made it something that is more clearly an actual cut off for newborns, like 10 pounds?!?

I have also decided though that I want to go home all in 1 day, when it is time to for us to go home. While it will take over 12 hours door to door to go from Anchorage, AK, to Watertown, MA, and I'm sure I'll be exhausted and in some degree of pain at the end, I think that stopping off halfway, getting our luggage, checking into a hotel room, checking out the next morning, rechecking luggage, re-going through security etc would also be quite exhausting. The pediatrician side of me is also fairly convinced that he is going to catch a cold from all the lovely recirculated air on the plane, and any baby 28 days old or younger with a fever of 100.4 or higher essentially automatically gets a 2 day hospital admission, so if he does spike a fever, I'd rather have that happen in Boston than in Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Chicago, or wherever we'd end up having an overnight layover. At least in Boston, I could choose which hospital to go to (Newton Wellesley Hospital would be my hospital of choice, by the way, no offense to MGH or CHB, but MGH and CHB don't have single rooms and NWH does!) and would be surrounding by family and my things! Also since our last posting, my mom, sister and I took a drive up north, and walked to Thunderbird Falls, which was a pretty waterfall, but nothing spectacular like other sites I've seen here. But after that, we went to a really fascinating church in Eklutna. St Nicholas Orthodox Church is left over from the days when the Russians came to Alaska and converted the native Athabaskans. The church seemed quite traditional Russian Orthodox to me, with beautiful paintings of icons in the inside. But the church burial ground incorporated the native tradition of Spirit Boxes, which are still being used today. So that was really neat to see.

St. Nicholas Orthodox Church

The inside of the church.

Spirit Boxes.

Kristin and Chris (my brother-in-law, not husband) left last night. It's always sad for me to drop people off at the airport, both because I'm sorry they're leaving and I'm sorry I'm not going with them! But at least Chris (my husband) will probably be here in a little less than 3 weeks and then the baby should be here in a little more than 3 weeks! The big challenge between now and then is to keep both my mind and muscles from atrophying. My mom and I are going to try to go for at least a short walk everyday and then a car ride somewhere, just to keep from getting too stir crazy. Other goals for the next few weeks:

• read some more books, as I've been told I won't have time like this to read for about a decade or so
• finish seasons 4 and 5 of "The Wire"
• start reviewing my Spanish, thanks to some CDs that have been sent to me
• learn how to install a car seat
• organize all the baby stuff and figure out if I need to buy more stuff
  

That's about all I can think of for right now.

Happy 4th of July!