Into the Third Trimester

Kate and I can't decide if we're into the third trimester or not.  I think we are.  The third trimester seems mostly about waiting.
EM is getting more and more active.
We've started construction on our basement.  We're installing a new bathroom down there, and turning what's left of my study into a small guest room.  Our basement is a bit of a mess right now, as Dan The Contractor has torn up a bunch of stuff that's mostly in a pile down there.  Good thing we don't have a kid running around now, as there are nails poking out all over the place.
In birthing class last week they talked about baby proofing the house.  I think that we have a lot of work to do in that arena.
In fact, I think we might actually be in trouble in that arena.  I'm quite positive that we're going to miss something critical, like a pile of knives sitting in a corner or something.
Evidently we have to set our water heater at 120 degrees farenheit.
I know that I've discussed this before, but I don't remember this degree of environmental paranoia as a kid.  We had the little plastic doohickeys that went into unused outlets, but that's all I remember for baby proofing.  No cabinet locks or anything like that.  And we lived in an apartment, so there was no option (at least, I don't think there was) for setting the water heater to anything.
I didn't see this, but evidently there was a New York Times article in the last week or so about some parents being actually charged with neglect in New York for allowing their eight year old kids to walk to school by themselves.  We want our kid to be able to do stuff like that. 
That's an old topic, I guess, so I'm going to stop this rant before it gets going.

We went to our favorite home improvement store yesterday.  Like Office Depot, but with a different first word in the name.  You know what I'm referring to, of course, I'm just hiding from their Customer Care folks.
Anyhow, we needed smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.  We'll get those up sometime before March, so we'll be able to take that off the baby-proofing checklist.
With the basement torn up the way it is right now Spenser the Wonder Dog is definitely on to something and he's beginning to act out some.  That means mostly that he's needy and whiny.
We're a little worried about Spenser. 
Not that he'll do something dangerous to the baby.
Well, at least not aggressively.  He'll absolutely clobber the baby on a regular basis with his tail (which I refer to as the "rudder of destruction") until the baby learns how to dodge it.  I'm not worried about that.
More that he's not going to handle usurpation very well.  There's lots of books on preparing the dog for the baby out there that we're not going to spend time reading.  We did get a CD of baby sounds that we're supposed to play for him to get him used to the new noises that will be in the house.
It was free.
We figure once the baby is old enough to start dropping food on the floor we're in the clear, Spenser will just follow him around all the time.  Kate thinks that the increased frequency in walks due to stroller time will take care of him in the meantime.
Kate assembled the new stroller, by the way.  This one folds up much easier.  Unfortunately, it doesn't get small enough to actually fit into Kate's car, but we're not going to worry about that right now.
We got car seat training at baby class last week, so we now know (in theory) how to put the car seat in the car, and how to put the baby in the car seat.
I'm a little dubious that I'll be able to make the baby's shoulder move in the same way as the training doll's, but we'll have to see what happens when the baby's here.
I'm pretty sure that his head won't turn all the way around like the doll's did, either.
We also learned a proprietary method of swaddling.
Swaddling, for those of you who don't know, is the act of wrapping the baby in a blanket so that it
1.  Feels secure
2.  Looks completely ridiculous.
We watched a DVD of some doctor who created the current PC method for getting a baby to stop crying.  He calls it the five S's
Swaddling
Side
Shushing
Swinging
Sucking
The theory is that there's a calming "reflex" that you can instigate in the baby when it's crying to get it to stop crying.
My guess is, from the way the material is presented and the way this guy the same catch phrases over and over again that the goal is mostly to get us (and every other parent out there) to have to pay a royalty every time we wrap the baby in a blanket.
The wrapping method makes sense to anyone that's ever made a wonton.  Essentially, treat the baby from the neck down like wonton filling and make him into a wonton with his head sticking out the top. 
Except that a blanket doesn't hold it's shape like a wonton wrapper does, so the baby ends up looking sort of like a carrot.  The theory is to contain the arms so that they can't flail around.  The theory further holds that the baby can upset itself by flailing his arms around, and that by containing the arms snugly against the body that doesn't happen.  The doc says that this is womb-like and that's why it calms the baby.
I will admit up front that as someone who is dangerously claustrophobic, I was dubious about this.
I don't think he's calming the baby. 
I think he's vegetating the baby.  Make the baby look like a carrot so that the baby acts like a carrot.
If the first S doesn't do the trick there's the other five, the highlights of which are Shushing, which means sticking your head right next to the baby's and loudly making white noise by blowing a "SH" sound into his ear (really); and Swinging, which means to bounce the baby's head (now completely isolated from him body by the Swaddling) around like an old IHOP NFL doll.  It's really more jiggling than swinging, but "jiggling" messes up the mnemonic.  
Again, all of this is supposed to induce the "calming reflex", which you can see on the DVD.  The baby stops crying and looks sort of deer-in-the-headlights stunned.
It's not a calming reflex.
It's putting the kid in what amounts to a straight-jacket and then inducing a combination of fear-based paralysis and humiliated mortification via loud noises and jiggling the head around.  The baby isn't calm, he's simultaneously terrified by the noise and embarrassed at how silly he looks.  But, he does stop crying.
My theory going into the class was to use the Gary Larson method (wrap the baby in a blanket, rub the blanket against the carpet, use the resultant static electricity to stick the baby to the wall), but if that doesn't work we'll try the new vegetation method that they're showing at the baby class.