Blaze Tricks Nick Into Moving World's Largest Piece of Furniture

Baby Blaze might not be arriving for another four months, but she's already cramping our style by making us spend our weekends at places like Babies R Us, Value City Furniture, and the baby section at Wal-Mart. Last week it took us two long nights to finish painting her room. Here are some pictures of Kasey putting the finishing touches on after about five hours of taping off walls and painting the trim.

Then the real fun began on Saturday morning when we picked up her furniture. Surprisingly, Babies R Us doesn't deliver furniture, so I had to recruit my buddy, Nick, to help me pick up the crib and armoire that we ordered. With the temperature at a balmy 20 degrees on Saturday, it was the perfect weather to ride around town in a rented UHaul truck with 194,000 miles and pick up furniture.

The morning started with a pleasant surprise as we ran into the Kinnucan family at Babies R Us. Confusing looks were exchanged as the Kinnucans were not quite sure why two guys without kids were strolling into Babies R Us at 10:00 on a Saturday morning. Once we got that all cleared up, Andy and I tied up the customer service desk for at least 20 minutes as he was trying to return some sort of baby cage and I was trying to pay the remaining balance on the furniture. When the salesman wheeled out the furniture, Nick and I pulled muscles in our backs just looking at it.

I'm not going to try to explain how we got a 200 lb, fully assembled armoire into our house and up the stairs. Any story I would tell would never do it justice. I was kicking myself for not having Kasey take some pictures or a video because it would have been great for the blog. Let's just sum it up by saying that it took every bit of 30 minutes to move the thing, Nick nearly died twice, and I thought I had crushed my hand and damaged my surgically repaired ankle on two different occasions in which we dropped the box. Kasey was her usual helpful self as she used the old "I'm pregnant" excuse for the 200th time to get out of doing a little bit of work.

Here's a picture of me with the beast.

A True Great

As many of you know, my great-grandmother, Mamaw Lettie, passed away last Sunday night at the age of 100. When I tell people this, they are usually surprised that I had a great-grandmother still living! I also find myself explaining that she was much closer to me than you might think a great-grandmother would be. She and my grandmother (her daughter) were neighbors and best friends for my entire life, which meant that she was just about everywhere my grandmother was. We really thought of her as an extra grandparent, and a wonderful one at that.

My favorite memory of Mamaw Lettie is that she would always tell my sister and me to "be careless" whenever we would leave her (as opposed to the usual grandparent warning, "be careful"). She really wanted us to enjoy life and not take things too seriously. I also remember playing Skip-Bo with her, learning how to sew a nine-patch, and the great sense of humor she had. As she got older, she seemed to think she could get away with saying just about anything, and that made her lots of fun to be around!

We were so lucky to have her in our lives for so long, and I know she was ready to go (in fact, she bet a family friend $100 that she wouldn't be there for her 101st birthday!). The one thing that makes me especially sad is that she and our daughter never had a chance to meet. Had she made it to June, we would have had five generations of women together. Believe it or not, my great-great-grandmother was alive when I was born, and we have the picture to prove it. But as it turns out, Matthew and I knew we were having a baby at Mamaw Lettie's 100th birthday in October--so little Baby Blaze is actually in the picture above! We got our five generations picture after all.

I'll miss you, Mamaw Lettie--I can't wait to tell Baby Blaze all about you.

Baby Blaze Endorses Barack Obama

SOUTH BEND, IN - The next generation of the Blazejewski dynasty - South Bend's most well-connected political family - endorsed Barack Obama for president on Friday, with Baby Blaze calling him a "man with extraordinary gifts of leadership and character." "I can feel change going on out there somewhere," Baby Blaze said in remarks made shortly after her mom, Kasey, drank a glass of orange juice this morning.

"I have marveled at his grit, grace, and ability to relate to babies from all different types of backgrounds" she said. Baby Blaze's endorsement was ardently sought by the camps of all of the remaining presidential contenders, and she delivered it at a pivotal time in the race. A young, fiery debater, in her second trimester, Baby Blaze is in a position to help Obama court the toddler voter as well as Babies-R-Us sales associates, two key elements of the Democratic Party.

Baby Blaze's parents also endorsed Obama from their front porch before a handful of people, including a guy driving a snow plow, the mailman, and the groundhog that lives in their backyard. "Today isn't just about politics for me. It's personal," Obama, 46, said when it came time for him to speak. "I was too distracted with my own career to remember the successful student government campaign Baby Blaze's dad, Matthew, ran in 1994, but I've been told it was something magical. And I was busy supporting the causes of the people of Illinois when Kasey ran for SGA at UK in 1996. But in the stories I heard, I saw how my grandparents and mother spoke about them, and about that period in our nation's life - as a time of great hope and achievement. To receive the endorsement of the first child of two great political figures like Matthew and Kasey moves me to tears...."

Baby Blaze had remained on the sideline of the presidential campaign for months, saying she was friends with Obama, McCain, Big Red in the Bend, Anna Banana, and some cute boy she had seen at the Farmer's Market last weekend. Lately, according to several associates, Baby Blaze became angered with what she viewed as "Stalin-like" comments by Hillary Clinton when she proposed that recess time in schools be eliminated and replaced with an extra science class. "I understand the need to improve the education system in this country, but getting rid of recess? That's just un-American. I told my mom that if I was born into that kind of world we better move to Canada before I start school."

"The world is changing and will never be the same once I arrive sometime in the middle of June. The old ways will not do. ... It is time for a new generation of leadership. So it is with Barack Obama," she added.