I can't believe that it's February. I know that this means that now some of you will be checking our blog obsessively looking for baby news. (I know because I do the same thing with other pregnant friends' blogs!) The due date is officially Feb. 22 so don't get too antsy yet. We're eager for this kid to get here but we would rather he wait until at least next Thursday to come because Carnaval has started. The hospital is right on the edge of one of the biggest parade routes so getting there would be quite a challenge.

Carnaval has a well-deserved reputation (though Salvador's celebration looks very different than the pictures you've probably seen from Rio) but for us it's a quiet time. All the festivities happen far from our neighborhood so all we notice is how empty everything is. (If we lived in a different part of town we'd feel otherwise.) The streets are empty. The restaurants and malls are quiet. They say the population of the city grows by one million during this week but everyone stays further in town. If you're participating in Carnaval, you generally head out around 4 or 5 in the afternoon and stay out until 6 or 7 in the morning. Then you head home or to a nearby friends' house and crash until it's time to go back out again. That's assuming you sleep that much--many people don't.

But we'll be at home. We can watch the bands on TV (except for Sunday night when we'll be having a team Super Bowl party). There's an areawide church retreat this weekend but we're opting to skip it. For some reason sleeping on the floor (or even an air mattress) is not high on my list right now. Instead, I'll pass Carnaval washing teeny little clothes and finishing getting things ready for the baby's arrival.