Getting Ready for Baby

I spent most of yesterday washing and sorting baby clothes from Myles that are now for Cole. I'd put stuff away in boxes and SORT OF grouped them by size, but not stringently. Now that I've got to reuse them, I had to really be sure of what I already had. Wow - we've got a lot of stuff. And at my baby shower, people were really into newborn clothes. So he'll probably never have to repeat and outfit because I don't really remember Myles wearing newborn clothes for longer than my a month tops. Can't really remember, but I think he segued into 0-3 months and 3 months stuff really quickly. He was like the 90% percentile for a long time.

So I took everything out of all of the boxes, and started making piles, which Myles tried to sabotage of course. Then I reboxed it, made lists to put on the outside of the box, and stacked stuff so that the stuff that would be climate appropriate earliest is on top and the stuff that wouldn't be until later (of that size bracket) would be on bottom. It should be fairly easy now to route stuff in and out of Cole's section, which is pretty small. Mark doesn't think we need another dresser - which I disagree with, which is partially why I'm readying stuff so early. Once he sees how much space Cole's stuff takes up, even with it being only 1 size at a time, I think he'll see that he's going to need his own dresser. Part of the problem is real estate - Myles and Cole are sharing a room and he doesn't think there's enough room. But I think if we swap the chest we use as a changing table for a dresser with a built in changing table, we'll be fine. It was cute that we got that one for free by painting and repurposing it, but we're going to have to spend some bucks at a certain point.

Renting our house was a great, great lesson. We'd both hoped to be moved into a bigger place by the time Cole was born, but I didn't see much better in the same price range on Craigslist and he'd JUST started a new job. Every baby we have, he's just started a new job! LOL. So, the timing didn't really let us, and without knowing what his commute was going to be like, or if there'd be any commute at all (working from home now) it didn't make sense to me to pick a geographic area to live in. Also, I refused to move pregnant again. I was a pack horse last pregnancy, and I always wonder if moving at 6 months contributed to bedrest at 7 months. I wanted to avoid bedrest like the plague this time, so I've taken it intentionally easy. If I'm tired, I sit down. If it hurts, I don't do it. And it's working great. I'm almost 33 weeks now and no complications like last time. Yay!

But as I was saying, renting this house was a cheap education. I've quickly learned what I don't want in a house. First lesson: square footage means nothing - check the layout. We've got lots of square footage, but lots of wasted space. The 2 doorways in Myles' room and lack of hallway makes one whole wall unusable. If Myles and Cole had the exact same room, just with only 1 door in the middle, instead of 2 walkthroughs, we'd gain a wall to put a toddler bed on. If we get desperate, I suppose we could block off a door, but without a hallway, the walk to his room would be far. You need quick access to the baby from our bedroom, but you also need quick access to the bathroom for cleaning. I think the house might have had a hallway originally that was stolen for the living room. The living room, which is disproportionately big. It's as if the person who lived here, only had a bed in their room and no clothes. They lived 100% in the living rooms. And it's great for entertaining, but you live your life 95% with your family and maybe 5% with parties, even if you're a big partier.

Biggest complaint other than the one bathroom, small closets, missing kitchen cabinets, which are all pretty normal for a house of this age and in this neighborhood, so no big surprise, is that I can't cook and watch my child at the same time. I never understood how important having one of those open kitchens that flows into the den or family room was. But now that I'm trying to cook and Myles is out doing mayhem in the family room, 2 rooms away, I appreciate that layout. We rented this house as singletons with a baby on the way, but we had no idea how we'd actually flow with a child. Now that we have an idea, it'll help a lot with the next house. I'm just happy we didn't buy a place like this and be stuck in it forever. It's great to get a test run. I have some mommy friends who bought before their babies were born and made compromises they didn't know they were making, and now in a depressed economy, can't sell for another 5-7 years. 5-7 years in baby time is forever! It felt smart to NOT buy when we moved because we could tell it was too inflated and California's economy didn't seem to support the home prices, but then when things started to crash to prices cheaper than when we moved, it felt a little bad to not be buying. Now, I'm fairly okay with it. As long as we can find a place with another bedroom to rent that'll last another 3 years, and hopefully the real estate prices STAY down, that'll be the best time for us to think about buying. By then, I could probably get a full time job or something, but staring down the barrel of another newborn, nope! I've got another 2 years of limited employment ahead.

The only difference is that now Mark works from home, so it'd be easier to get an in house babysitter (teenager or something) to come after school and sit with Myles (with Mark in the house) and I could teach more voice students during the week. And, the 2nd child never stays a baby as long as the first, is what I'm hearing. So Cole will probably be eating solids and walking way earlier than Myles. So who knows. All I know is that I feel good about our lifestyle at the moment, excited about the future. Not TOO frightened about the aspect of handling 2 kids and very happy that Myles is going to have a baby brother to love.

Bored and emotional

I've had a rough week this week. MY hormones are crazy and I am a different person temporarily. I know of one particular crazy girl who I defriended from FB who was an acquaintance in our mommy group who was always paranoid about everything. I now wonder how exhausting it must be to be her! Luckily so far, the pregnant crazies don't last very long with me - it's a couple of days here or there, and usually when it's happening I know that it's happening, not that it makes me feel that much better in the moment.

I see a bunch of two year olds walking around with pacifiers and for the first time, I'm glad Myles didn't take to it. Not that I didn't try! He just rejected it when he was about 4 months old. Along with the bottle - ugh! But whatever, he's off the boob and the pacifier now and he looks like a big boy and I like that. 2 isn't too old for a pacifier, it just LOOKS too old to people who can't gauge kids age. It just looks like a kid walking around with a pacifier, not a baby.

I'm watching 2 kids today, but it was almost 3! That would've been interesting. I would've just worn the 5 month old in a carrier and the 2 year olds sort of entertain themselves. I just have to check in with Myles often about whether he's got to potty or not.

My Baby Shower

This is about a third of the currently pregnant women in our group! We're spawning.