Starting to prepare

There are about a million things to do to get ready for a baby. We were pretty well just waiting and hoping for the best during the first trimester (other than doctors appointments and such). Now it feels like we need to start actually planning in earnest, because the due date is less than six months away and the to do list is long.

One of Jeff's very helpful qualities is that once it is decided that we are going to do something, he likes to just get it done. There is not a lot of indecisiveness or second-guessing, and it can be excruciating for him to have to wait. This makes the practical work of checking things off the to do list much easier.

Currently, Jeff and I each have our own offices at home. Our house has three bedrooms, and right now we sleep in one of them and I have a room and Jeff has a room. This is an unnecessary luxury, and it was already decided ahead of time that my office would become the baby room and my desk would move into Jeff's office. In order to do this, it was necessary to rearrange the basement to make room for a recliner that has been in my office (for reading, although it doesn't often get used), and for extra storage space to hold my yarn and knitting accessories. On Thursday night we went down to the basement to talk about how to rearrange things, and then basically Jeff just did the major work of moving furniture. We have since bought cube shelving with fabric baskets to use as drawers for storage, and now the only thing left related to rearranging the basement is purchasing a storage cabinet (a big shelf with doors on the front) to store our board games.

It is exciting to be doing things to get ready for the baby – now that the recliner has moved downstairs, there is room in this bedroom to start getting some baby things. We have signed up for a prenatal class that starts in June, and tomorrow Jeff is going to call some childcare centers to get our names on their lists – most places here don't take kids younger than eighteen months old, but apparently the wait lists can be up to several years long to get into some of the better places, so it is definitely not too early.

I think that our lives might be moving into the "all baby all the time" phase, but we are also trying to enjoy our time together in these last few baby-free months. We went out to dinner and dessert on Friday night, and even though we stopped and bought some maternity pants on the way home, we hear that it is important to do these kinds of things now, because after the baby comes it might be a very long time!