I guess I'm nesting?
Frankly I feel like I have been force-nesting the past several months (moving will do that to you, I suppose) and though I don't really feel like I have the time or energy to do anything to get ready for baby, I know that baby is coming and there are things I have to do (and so I'm ever so slowly getting around to doing them).
I guess that's not really nesting.
"Nesting is the act of preparing your home for your baby's arrival, often fueled by big bursts of energy late in pregnancy," so says BabyCenter, and although I am preparing my home for my baby's arrival (I guess), it is certainly not fuelled by "big bursts of energy."
So I'm not really nesting. But I'm preparing anyway.
Part of my preparations involved going through Benjamin's old clothes and desperately trying to remove all the spit-up stains from them. That child had reflux so bad! Isn't it funny how they seemed so clean when I (almost tearfully) packed them away but now that I'm busting them out—five-ish years later—they're absolutely covered in yellow stains? (That's the proteins from breastmilk, apparently, and the solution is evidently OxiClean so maybe I need to give that a try because I still have a whole pile of adorable outfits that look somewhat disgusting).
So I sorted and I washed (and we all oohed and aahed over the tiny preemie outfits that were too big for Benjamin when he was brand new) and I folded up the "newborn" and 0-3 month clothes for Alexander. And then I left them in piles on the floor because...I had no idea what I was going to do with them.
They sat around so long that I ended up folding them a second time (thanks, kids) before it dawned on me that we have half an empty dresser sitting in Miriam's room.
Deciding who got what room was difficult when we moved here. We had one more bedroom than we were used to and at first everyone wanted their own room and then no one wanted their own room—they all wanted to share. We went through many configurations mentally before finally settling on the big girls having their own rooms and the younger two having to share, with the understanding that one of them would move in with Miriam somewhere down the road so that Alexander could go in the room next to Mom and Dad.
I didn't expect the room-switching to happen so soon, but it did.
I wanted to move either Benjamin or Zoë's clothes into Miriam's dresser to make room for Alexander's clothes in the dresser they'd been sharing. This led to long, emotionally-charged conversations about who would share with whom.
They both wanted to share with Alexander.
"Me share new baby!" Zoë pleaded.
"No! I want to share with the baby!" Benjamin objected.
I don't think either of them quite understands what they're in for...
The new baby won't be in that room for quite some time, anyway.
Eventually I was able to convince Zoë to share with Miriam by asking if she wanted to help me move her clothes to Miriam's dresser. She loves helping.
"Me help-o!" she sang as she carted her clothes across our living room. "Move my shirts!"
Slowly she got so ridiculously excited about moving rooms that she couldn't draw the line at moving her clothes. She wanted all of her stuff out of her old room and into her "new" room.
"My new 'ed!" she said, claiming the bottom bunk. "My new room! Me share Mimi! 'En [that's how she says Ben; we're just happy she's calling him anything] share new baby! Yeah, yeah. New room, my new room!"
Even now she'll randomly start spouting off about who is sharing with the new baby and who gets a new room because it's just so exciting.
Benjamin is less excited about the switch. Tonight he was crying in bed about wishing we'd staved off the move until the baby was here because he misses "having nobody in my room," meaning, of course, that he misses having somebody in his room.
And I suppose it's not all unicorns and rainbows for Miriam, who now has to share with a toddler, or for Zoë, who has a little bit of trouble sharing with anybody with her rule-enforcing, mess-shunning attitude. For the past several nights, for example, she's been shouting at Miriam, "No galk, Mimi! NO GALK!" whether Miriam is talking or not...just so that Miriam knows that talking time is over, I suppose (when she shared with Rachel she was constantly having to move stuff out of her bed and she would toss it onto Rachel's "side" of the room with an air of disgust).
The couple of months Zoë and Benjamin shared a room was probably—and surprisingly—Zoë's most positive room-sharing situation so far (which is kind of why I wanted her to stay in there, but...she was too excited for her "new room" to do that).
Now to just...do everything else on my to-do list...
Frankly I feel like I have been force-nesting the past several months (moving will do that to you, I suppose) and though I don't really feel like I have the time or energy to do anything to get ready for baby, I know that baby is coming and there are things I have to do (and so I'm ever so slowly getting around to doing them).
I guess that's not really nesting.
"Nesting is the act of preparing your home for your baby's arrival, often fueled by big bursts of energy late in pregnancy," so says BabyCenter, and although I am preparing my home for my baby's arrival (I guess), it is certainly not fuelled by "big bursts of energy."
So I'm not really nesting. But I'm preparing anyway.
Part of my preparations involved going through Benjamin's old clothes and desperately trying to remove all the spit-up stains from them. That child had reflux so bad! Isn't it funny how they seemed so clean when I (almost tearfully) packed them away but now that I'm busting them out—five-ish years later—they're absolutely covered in yellow stains? (That's the proteins from breastmilk, apparently, and the solution is evidently OxiClean so maybe I need to give that a try because I still have a whole pile of adorable outfits that look somewhat disgusting).
So I sorted and I washed (and we all oohed and aahed over the tiny preemie outfits that were too big for Benjamin when he was brand new) and I folded up the "newborn" and 0-3 month clothes for Alexander. And then I left them in piles on the floor because...I had no idea what I was going to do with them.
They sat around so long that I ended up folding them a second time (thanks, kids) before it dawned on me that we have half an empty dresser sitting in Miriam's room.
Deciding who got what room was difficult when we moved here. We had one more bedroom than we were used to and at first everyone wanted their own room and then no one wanted their own room—they all wanted to share. We went through many configurations mentally before finally settling on the big girls having their own rooms and the younger two having to share, with the understanding that one of them would move in with Miriam somewhere down the road so that Alexander could go in the room next to Mom and Dad.
I didn't expect the room-switching to happen so soon, but it did.
I wanted to move either Benjamin or Zoë's clothes into Miriam's dresser to make room for Alexander's clothes in the dresser they'd been sharing. This led to long, emotionally-charged conversations about who would share with whom.
They both wanted to share with Alexander.
"Me share new baby!" Zoë pleaded.
"No! I want to share with the baby!" Benjamin objected.
I don't think either of them quite understands what they're in for...
The new baby won't be in that room for quite some time, anyway.
Eventually I was able to convince Zoë to share with Miriam by asking if she wanted to help me move her clothes to Miriam's dresser. She loves helping.
"Me help-o!" she sang as she carted her clothes across our living room. "Move my shirts!"
Slowly she got so ridiculously excited about moving rooms that she couldn't draw the line at moving her clothes. She wanted all of her stuff out of her old room and into her "new" room.
"My new 'ed!" she said, claiming the bottom bunk. "My new room! Me share Mimi! 'En [that's how she says Ben; we're just happy she's calling him anything] share new baby! Yeah, yeah. New room, my new room!"
Even now she'll randomly start spouting off about who is sharing with the new baby and who gets a new room because it's just so exciting.
Benjamin is less excited about the switch. Tonight he was crying in bed about wishing we'd staved off the move until the baby was here because he misses "having nobody in my room," meaning, of course, that he misses having somebody in his room.
And I suppose it's not all unicorns and rainbows for Miriam, who now has to share with a toddler, or for Zoë, who has a little bit of trouble sharing with anybody with her rule-enforcing, mess-shunning attitude. For the past several nights, for example, she's been shouting at Miriam, "No galk, Mimi! NO GALK!" whether Miriam is talking or not...just so that Miriam knows that talking time is over, I suppose (when she shared with Rachel she was constantly having to move stuff out of her bed and she would toss it onto Rachel's "side" of the room with an air of disgust).
The couple of months Zoë and Benjamin shared a room was probably—and surprisingly—Zoë's most positive room-sharing situation so far (which is kind of why I wanted her to stay in there, but...she was too excited for her "new room" to do that).
Now to just...do everything else on my to-do list...
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