It’s been four days since I last posted.  Things around here have been a little crazy, but I haven’t gone into labor, so I thought I’d better post before people started wondering.

Here’s what we’ve been up to:

1) Monday & Tuesday – Making Christmas Treats

We managed to crank out some sugar cookies, cyclops cookies (aka peanut butter blossoms), cupcakes (from a box), caramel corn, puppy chow, as well as coated pretzels, which Alethea particularly enjoyed helping mommy make:

Taste testing counts as helping, right?

2) Tuesday – Party Prep

Tuesday night was my annual piano student Christmas party and mini-recital.  Basically I have all my students over to our house and they play Christmas songs for each other and then we eat junk food and play music themed games.  This year I tried something new – a build your own favor station:

It was a big hit with the kids, even with a strictly enforced limit on the number of pieces of candy they could take.

3) Wednesday – Errands, Check-Up and Lessons

I was fortunate to have lots of help from Alethea’s grandmothers on Wednesday, and thus was able to get to Target, go to my 38 week check-up, buy some more of Peter’s Christmas presents, and still make it home in time to teach several piano lessons.

Bad news is that my midwife said I’m dilated “one to two” centimeters.  Basically, I think she just wanted to make me feel better that I’m not any further along, despite having so many contractions on Saturday that I briefly debated whether I ought to head to the hospital.

Good news though is that the lessons I taught were my last for December, so I am officially free to have this baby without having to do any make-up lessons or refunds.  Woo hoo!

4) Today – Mommy and Alethea’s Fun Day

I’ve been feeling guilty that I’ve been so busy this week that Alethea has been forced to do a whole lot of self-entertaining, so today I planned to spend the whole morning doing Alethea’s favorite activities.  We didn’t get as much time together as I anticipated though, because Alethea slept in ’till 10am (hope she’s not getting sick).  However, Alethea did have fun taking a long bath with her tub toys and we also squeezed in some ‘art’ time.  Our project – decorating paper gift bags with markers:

So that’s our week thus far.

On the docket for tomorrow: a little more shopping, then cleaning the house, followed by the Christmas Eve service at church, then hosting Peter’s family’s traditional Chinese take-out Christmas Eve dinner, and rounded off with a bit of gift wrapping and stocking stuffing before bed.  Should be a delightful day!