Take THAT, Nursery Themes!

We spent all last week and weekend cleaning out the house (read: small, one-bedroom apartment) to make room for baby. There has been some discussion from friends and family on where we intend to "put" the baby when she is born. Good news, friends: Babies are small, and, at first at least, they don't move much.

Babies, however, come with a lot of accoutrements. Bags and bags of your friends' kids' cast-off baby clothes, a bassinet, a crib, more on the way. Our closets were already stuffed to brimming.

I'd love to know how many pounds we recycled, donated, and threw out last week. My husband, it seems, has never actually gotten rid of anything. Bins of Christmas ornaments (we've never had a tree, and probably won't this year either), stacks of his high-school newspaper, eight hundred photographs of the desert, receipts, papers (upon papers, upon papers).

At any rate, we've cleared out space. We've rearranged. We've set up a nursery of sorts, in our bedroom. Next to the crib hangs a painting of Washington crossing the Delaware and a Chrissy Deiger original photograph. These were not in the "nursery themes" tabs of Target.com or Amazon. I'm not really into themes, or things matching, for that matter. Also, I like to imagine her dreams not being of cartoon monkeys, but of stalwart men, icy rivers.


We'd been worried about keeping the cats out of the crib. Turns out we inadvertently stumbled upon the trick. Don't put the mattress in, and just drape a sheet over the metal grid. I put the crib together on Sunday and then went out. When I came back, every little square of fabric had been poked in. Someone had jumped in the crib, and had some trouble getting back out. I felt so sad that I had missed it; it must have been hilarious. It must have been Vander, because Monday afternoon, I came into the bedroom, and Bureau was in there, stuck, just staring at me. She'd seen the scene on Sunday, mulled it over for a day, and decided to give it a go. Needless to say, neither one of them has gotten back into the crib since.

I had a feeling being pregnant and all would qualify as an "incredibly exciting time," especially since Jason and I have felt "ready" for parenthood for a couple of years now, but that's not even the half of it. Laying around in bed feeling the baby kick every night is a joy I could not have anticipated. She seems to know her dad's hand (I know this cannot be true; she knows nothing, only darkness, pressure, sound, movement) and sets to work whenever she feels it. Every time he feels a kick, Jason says, "Baby!" Some nights, we lay around and giggle and talk, and Jason just says, "Baby! Baby!" over and over.

It never gets old. I feel like I've been pregnant forever (entering fall, I'm realizing this is my third season since we found out the news), and I'm excited for December, but I try to remember how quickly it will seem that it went when this is all over.