After waiting for a few months for this newborn basics class, I was really looking forward to it and expecting great things. It really didn’t live up to our expectations. The teacher was a lady who was very California and had a masters in counseling, so she was kind of touchy feely and liked talking about feelings. She seemed disorganized and just sort of touched on random things here and there without going as in depth as she could have on lots of subjects. If people asked questions, she couldn’t really give clear or complete answers. We expected it to be a labor and delivery or pediatrics nurse teaching the course, which I think would have been more useful. Matt wanted to leave at the lunch break (which was only half an hour!), but we decided to stick it out.

The fun part of the class was that we had a doll, pictured above, that was “our baby” througout the class. We picked a monster huge one that was too big for any of his practice clothes or anything. Hopefully our baby will not be born anywhere near his size. At the beginning of the class, the teacher said she wanted us to hold and interact with “our babies” throughout the class, which was fairly silly. She was holding a doll of her own and would baby talk to it periodically.

Anyway, all in all we walked away with a few tidbits of information that we didn’t know going in, but overall it was a waste of time. We did get to watch a portion of The Happiest Baby on the Block DVD, which was very useful after I had just read the book, but I could have just bought that on my own and saved a lot of time and money. Matt says he feels slightly more prepared than he did before the class, so I guess it did some good.

Oh, and I once again feel inferior about my belly size after the class. There was one girl who was 33 weeks along with a huge round belly, and I still barely look pregnant at all if I’m sitting down. Matt says I should be happy if it means that we aren’t going to have a huge baby and that a 7-pounder wouldn’t be a bad thing. He makes a good point. Also, I guess everyone just carries differently, and I need to stop having belly envy. I do get lots of comments from people now, so at least I am noticeably pregnant to the outside world. I’m just not that big.

Last night we went to the Armenian Food Festival with our Armenian friend, Garen, and two other friends, Cory and Alex. It was a good time, and we had some delicious food. Cory showed up with not enough cash, and Matt and I didn’t bring that much but we covered him, so we had to be very careful with our spending. Like eight-year-olds trying to blow our allowances, we spent every dollar we had between the three of us. For dinner, we got kebab plates with a kebab, rice, salad, and bread. Matt and I also got dolmas. They had pastries for dessert, and we got two pastries each. We both got something called Armenian Apple Delight, which was delicious and like apple pie with phyllo dough. Matt also got a baklava-like roll and I got a cream puff (which was not Armenian as I was told by Garen after I already bought it). Everything was yummy, and we saw some pretty good dancing acts while we had dessert.