Big Projects, Busy Weekend; or The Nursery, Part 1

How were everyone's Memorial Day Weekends? Relaxing, enjoyable, and full of sunshine, I hope. Mine was definitely the latter two though not so much the first because we were BUSY.

Busy doing what? Going to the movies and dinner with friends and family. Cleaning up our roof deck in preparation for summer planting. Attending baseball games. Dropping off donations at a local thrift store. And, oh yeah, two big things: Starting a Registry (!) and Beginning to Prepare the Baby's Room (!!)

We went to Gi.ggle on Saturday afternoon to check out strollers and cribs. We wound up choosing a different stroller than I had anticipated walking in after we compared weight and ease of collapsibility, but we're both excited about it. And we started our first baby registry, stocking it with little clothes and toys and a few decorative items.

We didn't actually register for or purchase the stroller and crib yet. One will be a gift from my MIL. The other apparently only takes four weeks to be delivered and we are nowhere near ready emotionally or space-/planning-wise to be setting up baby furniture yet. But I'm glad we looked at a few options and made some decisions.

I have to confess that afterward, as we ate lunch in SoHo, I began to completely freak myself out about what we'd just done. Even though we hadn't actually bought anything, I still started to worry about jinxing things by registering before 24 weeks. Right now, that's the magical safe point in my mind, even though I know rationally that a) it's not all that safe and b) I have no compelling reason yet to worry about reaching it. Something about this month (weeks 20-24) is really amping up my stress and fear, though, and I'm over analyzing every cervical stab, weird back ache, and uterine twinge. I ran to the bathroom at the end of lunch to check my tp for spotting-- and it was clean, as it has been the entire pregnancy, despite my conviction that I'd felt myself bleeding.

My anxiety's calmed a little since then, though, so much so that Lawyer Guy and I were able to tackle our second big get-ready-for-Smudgie project of the weekend: clearing out his giant desk in preparation for selling or donating it. People, we uncovered some real crap during the process. I'm talking about receipts for $15 sushi lunches we had TEN YEARS AGO! Credit card bills from 1999 that somehow made the move to two different apartments. Tax returns from 1997. Actual credit cards that expired in 2008. Not to mention dozens of weekly, two page response papers from multiple English classes I took as an undergrad. Altogether, we collected two giant garbage bags of paper, old batteries, dry pens, and corroded rubber bands to chuck and made a neat little pile of important documents and useful office and stationery supplies to transition to the new, smaller desk we plan to get for the living room.

Which leaves Smudgie's (hopeful) future room looking like this:


Yeah, it's a not so impressive Before picture (and yes, Bella is a permanent fixture of this room and will be less than thrilled when "her bed" makes the trip to the big furniture warehouse in the sky). But we made a start, at least, which is something. Over the next month we'll dispose of all the furniture in there, find homes for the books and CDs and knickknacks that clutter up the place, and then we can begin the real work: renovating the closest, painting the walls, and putting up the window treatments.

We'll get it done in time, right? Don't answer that.