Nesting

I've been out of communication for awhile, but a lot has been happening. Thanksgiving was a busy and fun trip. I really enjoyed hanging out with family and especially seeing my sister and brother-in-law for the first time since getting pregnant.

On the day that we left Chicago, though, I came down with some crazy muscle aches that -- coupled with a sore throat -- seem to have been virus-related rather than just aches and pains from traveling with a fetus. I ended up spending two sick days at home in bed. I have lost count of how many sick days I've taken so far this year, but I'm quite certain that I'm well beyond my paid time off for the year.

Coming back to school after two days of a sub (and after a week away from my students) was difficult for everyone involved, but at least I was starting to feel better.

Then on Thursday evening, my nose started feeling runny and stuffed-up at the same time. I started coughing more than I had been. All of a sudden, I felt like my face was puffed up with phlegm or something and all of Friday I was coughing uncontrollably and at times could hardly squeak, much less speak.

The timing of all of this couldn't be worse. It's right around the time that Ben and I had started to feel the pressure of "There's a lot we have to do to get ready for this baby!" in our ears. We'd been planning to spend the weekend working on cleaning and moving things around to get ready. Our plan was to move my desk to the living room to the spot where the TV is and the TV to the basement in order to make room for the baby's things. In order to do this, we needed to sort through and sell off a lot of books that were in boxes on the floor of the baby's room, and go through a lot of junk that was currently inhabiting my desk. And instead I was barely functional.

Saturday morning, as we were discussing some goals for trying to get things accomplished, I looked around our bedroom and said, "I was just thinking about when we first saw this house with [our realtor] and how we imagined this room as our kids' room and the other room as the our bedroom. Funny . . . sometimes that still kind of feels like the more natural fit to me."

Ben's ears perked up and he said, "Well, if we were going to do that, now would be the time to do it."

We spent the next few hours taking measurements and using floorplanning software to see if it would work. It was really fun. It reminded me of other "fresh starts" that we've had together -- moving into our apartment in MN, house shopping and setting up the new house . . . As a person who came home as a newborn to the same 2-bedroom apartment that her parents continue to call home, I've never had the experience of "moving" in the same way as some other people that I know. I have moved several times, but always as a couple or as a single person, never as a family. I can kind of see the appeal now, though. The freshness of it all. The chance to go through stuff and decide what's really important and what's not. Getting to set up furniture in new rooms and pick out new paint colors.  I love our house, but I am now understanding the appeal of moving to a new home every few years, as I know that some people do.

Even though we'll be staying in the same house, I'm excited to move bedrooms. It makes me so much more excited to set up the nursery, knowing that it will truly be the baby's room. (Up until now, there were lots of "loose ends" with the transition of our office into the baby's room. For example, my dresser has always been in the closet of the office. We didn't really have anywhere for my dresser to go in our room, and so my dresser was originally going to stay in the baby's room, at least for the short-term. Now instead of my dresser staying in the baby's room, I'll just move into the room with my dresser and all of our furniture will be in our room and all of Bambin@'s furniture will be in his/her room.) I'm almost tempted to paint the nursery, since we'll be emptying it of furniture anyway. But that feels wasteful, since the paint job was done right before we bought the house and it's a nice neutral color that will provide a good backdrop for other decor. Makes more sense to wait until Bambin@ is old enough to help choose the new color anyway.

The adrenaline of it all made it much easier to start going through some things. I've packed away nearly all of my non-maternity clothes that I won't be able to fit into for at least another 3 months and sorted through about half of the books and desk-clutter that needed to be dealt with. Now it truly feels like nesting season!