Nesting?

A here. OK, I think maybe we’re in the phase everyone warns you about, right before the baby arrives. I had a pretty good burst of manic energy this weekend starting on Saturday. At one point I was simultaneously doing laundry, making a pillow to match the quilt, vacuuming, packing for the hospital and cooking a big pot of white bean and kale soup.

Sunday we ran lots of errands, including getting the various storage containers we’ve been needing for the nursery—a basket for the 80 cloth diapers that were delivered this week and all the baskets and boxes needed to store diaper covers, bibs, blankets and burp cloths (check out the ones I made—not as practical as the Gerber ones but way cuter). The stuffed cat was also a day long project that turned out to be pretty darn cute but was a major pain in the ass to sew. I don’t see me crafting friends for him anytime soon.

Today’s big project was turning the cranes we made at the baby party into a mobile. Thank goodness KP and E came to help with that one. I don’t think we would have finished it without them. But we love the way it turned out.

The breast pump and bottles have been sterilized, the last of the baby laundry has been done and the hospital music is all ready to go. I’m pretty much finding myself trying to convince the baby that it’s really all right to come out now. Last night I even had some shiatsu to stimulate some movement in there. It did produce a lot of somersaults but little else.

Maybe the baby is waiting until after tomorrow’s inauguration to enter this new world. And that’s OK. I just had my hopes up for an MLK birthday. And I’m not super excited about having to go to work this week. I guess I better gear up for it—at this rate, it doesn’t look like baby is going to provide me with a good excuse not to go.

a glider…really?

Yes. It’s true. We bought a glider. I know, it’s hard to look at. Worse yet, we decided to put it in the living room. It didn’t seem feasible to have it upstairs, isolated from social interaction. I have a hard time believing it myself, but we actually invited this massive piece of hideousness to dominate our central living space. Maybe I’m exaggerating a little. I’m just trying to prepare myself for future home decor adjustments necessitated by the impending presence of a small child. Did I mention the knob covers on the gas stove? To be perfectly honest, those were introduced after cowboy turned on the gas one evening while trying to climb into a scrumptiously dirty chili pot we left on the stove. Hm, cats.

Our decision to get the glider came after we visited our friends and their new baby. Watching mom breastfeeding baby while gliding back and forth EFFORTLESSLY was the kicker. From that moment on, we knew we had to get one, and we had to have anything that would make life with a new baby easier. That sort of opened the floodgates to allowing all sorts of aesthetically discordant baby-soothing and baby-holding devices to occupy more space in our house. The following week, our other friends with their year-old baby asked us to come “shop” at their house to see if we wanted any of the baby stuff they had acquired in the past year. The pendulum had certainly swung as we loaded the CRV with a portable bassinet, an electric swing, a bouncy seat, a bathtub chair thingy, a travel bed and travel mat, wondering how we ever thought we could mange without this stuff. I know it sounds like a lot, but we get to give it all back to them when we’re done, and they’ll use it all again when they have their second child. Rethink, recycle, reuse, reclaim. Or something to that effect.

It does feel like we have turned a complete 180 from a year ago when we imagined ourselves to be the kind of parents who wouldn’t let their home look like some rainbow-colored Grinch secretly visited in the night, took one bite of the cookie and spewed all over the house. Well, as the cliche goes–that was then; this is now.

I don’t actually think the house looks that bad. Then again, can my perspective be trusted? Aren’t I seeing things through the lens of a soon-to-be parent? Doesn’t that change everything? Can you tell by my slightly frantic tone that our due date is a week from tomorrow?