On Second Thought

maybe there's something to this nesting thing after all...

Lately I've been consumed by a need to DO THINGS. All things. Everything I can think of that could possibly need doing. I write out to-do list after to-do list, crossing off a few items each night and more on the weekends. I'm out of books to read, my work load isn't that heavy, and I can't sit still. Even JP, who is quite used to my to-do listing, remarked that I seemed a bit... unusual lately.

On the plus side, my house is looking beautiful. The baby's nursery is painted a very cheerful shade of yellow and all the linens from Land of Nod are so cute! My big challenge of the moment is locating a valance for the window. The one in the "Beautiful Morning" set is nearly the same shade of yellow as the walls and I think that's a bit much, but I'm having a terrible time finding something else. I perused the aisles of Buy Buy Baby yesterday and was amazed at all the infant things I've forgotten about.  Pacifiers (not that Landon ever liked them), mylicon drops (not that they ever seemed to help), and bottles (not that Landon liked the ones I bought first last time) -- there's so many things we need to stock back up on! We've also been setting up our master bedroom to house the baby for the first several weeks. We have a changing table that matches our bedroom furniture and an arm's reach co-sleeper that at least doesn't clash (a great craigslist buy). I have the table set up with baskets and a changing pad cover that matches our bedding and a box of itty bitty size 1 diapers. In the nursery I've framed my beautiful etsy prints and plan to make JP tackle the hanging butterflies next weekend. Everything is really coming together and I can't wait to get it all done and take pictures.

But baby stuff isn't the only thing on my lists. Our bedroom will soon have framed art on its walls (thanks to some discoveries during my massive spring cleaning last weekend) and I've ordered a gorgeous, abstract print of Chicago for my office. The books in our study are now in alphabetic order by subject and author. Landon's baby book is filled in with information (thank god for this blog- it contains the only existing record of his 12-month doctor appointment stats) and pictures, and for reasons that can only be explained by 26 weeks of pregnancy, I spent one night last week making a scrapbook page to be framed in Landon's big boy room. It's actually quite cute, with his birth announcement, two NICU pictures, and a sonogram shot, but it is decidedly not my normal kind of project. JP looked over at me at 10:45, surrounded by pinking shears, stickers, and scraps of paper and asked if we needed to talk. But I'm quite fine, just filled with a nearly frantic need to do things to complete every room of my house before the baby comes because she WILL care if one wall of my bedroom is missing just a little something to really finish the look.

In non-nesting news, I visited a co-worker, his wife, and their new baby girl today. I brought them chicken barley chili with all the fixings and spent a lovely hour smiling at their daughter and sympathizing with their sleeplessness and feelings of doubt. I'm getting pretty excited to do this again.  Terrified, but excited. This time I have the knowledge and a hazy memory of how hard and how bad it can be. But I also know how extraordinary that love is that you feel for your child and how very much fun he or she will become. I could write post after post about Landon right now, but there truly aren't words to describe how sweet and funny and chatty and charming and easy he is. I think it might be worth the sleepless year of a difficult baby to get this joyous of a toddler- if that's how the trade-off works, though maybe then it flips back and we get a bratty teenager? It's so hard to picture that after all the kisses and hugs and pretend tacos with ketchup he gave me today.

Man, I'm exhausted. I'm half-watching the Oscars and my mind keeps wandering over to the vanilla bean ice cream and fresh strawberries in my fridge. Surely all that organizing burned enough calories to justify a bowl?