Baby Countdown

I am now about 7-1/2 months pregnant with our first baby, a boy! We've decided on a name for our little son, but we're keeping it a secret until he's born, which should happen in mid-August. We are very excited and also nervous. We've been taking weekly childbirth classes in which we're learning the Bradley method of natural childbirth. I am kind of nervous about this whole birth thing, but I take comfort in knowing that millions (billions? trillions? quadrillions?) of women have done it already and most of them turn out fine, including my own brave mother who had 4 all-natural births. But still, I hear it's not a pleasant process. Sigh.

Justin and I bought a house in Katy, and we moved in almost a month ago. This is Justin and me the day we closed on our house.

The house was a foreclosure, and we got a pretty good price on it. It was in good shape overall, but it was quite dirty. Thankfully we had a lot of help from family and friends in fixing it up and cleaning it the weekend we moved in. We really like living here- it's so spacious, especially compared to our one-bedroom apartment in Rice Village! We still have a lot of work to do to get the baby room ready for our little guy. Speaking of which, is anyone wanting to get rid of a crib, dresser, or high chair?

This Summer Justin is working at an internship, which is scheduled to end Aug. 12, 6 days before my due date of Aug. 18. I'm kind of hoping that the baby will come a few days early, like maybe Aug. 13 or 14, to give us maximal time at home together with the baby before we go back to school (me on Aug. 23 and Justin on Aug. 30). After this Summer, Justin will have one more semester of school before completion of his Master's degree. I will still have several more years (2? 3?) before finishing my Ph.D, but for the rest of the time I'm in school I will mostly be doing research and only taking 1 class at a time (if any). As a theory person, my research can mostly be done from home, so I'm hoping to be able to continue school on a flexible schedule while taking care of my little guy.

I am not working this Summer. Or, I should day, I'm not working outside the home. I have been spending most of my time getting our house unpacked and arranged in a homey way, and now I'm starting to have more time to work on my research. My goal is to get some good progress on my research before our son arrives in August, since I'm guessing his arrival will shake things up a bit and may forestall my school work for a while. I'm trying to finish my field exam, which for micro theory is just a paper surveying current literature on our intended topic. I'm studying public goods. My paper is pretty much written, but I still need to go through a few iterations of getting feedback from my adviser and fixing it up according to his recommendations. Finishing that paper is my first academic goal for this Summer. My second is making some good progress on my own research- maybe coming up with some theoretical results that I can work into an outline for my first original research paper.

So there you have it. That's what's going on with the O'Shays right now.