daydreaming

I've reached that point in this pregnancy where I am starting to spend ridiculous amounts of time lost in delicious daydreams, picturing what my baby girl is going to look like, what her personality will be like, what it will be like to have her in our daily lives, in our home, in our family. It's sublime.

I will admit that when I picture her, I picture her looking a lot like Super Boy only more feminine. Similar faces and features (especially the eyes and thick, dark eyelashes and the beautiful rosy lips), with similar hair color and curl like Super Boy's, but I picture her hair longer. I picture her build being more slender though, more like I was as a baby/toddler/kid. I try to imagine what her smile will be like, and her voice, and her laugh. How her little fingers will look in my hand, and the shape of her little feet. I'm obsessed, and she's not even here yet!

I'm sure it's due in part to the fact that other friends who were also pregnant have had their baby girls recently, and seeing the pictures of their yummy newborns is akin to torture for an impatient mama like me. I find myself absorbing every detail of their beautiful babies, from the downy hair to the peach-like skin, the itty bitty fingers and toes, the little button noses. I'm so thrilled for my friends to finally be holding their babies in their arms, but I've gotta say that my arms are itching to hold my baby girl, and that's a tough kind of impatience to endure.

Granted, our baby isn't quite ready for her to make her grand entrance yet. She still has several weeks of gestating to do to get big, strong and healthy and I would never want to jeopardize that. I want her to be fully-cooked when she joins us, for sure.

And, frankly, we're not quite ready for her arrival yet either! I'm still struggling to decide where to put her upon her arrival, for starters. Our house is laid out such that our bedroom is at the front of the house, Super Boy's room is right next to ours (we can literally see most of his room while laying in our bed), Super Girl's room is slightly down the hall, and then our guest room/play room is at the other end of the hallway, right next to the bathroom. The long-term plan is to move Super Boy to the guest room/play room and put the baby in his room, but the question we're struggling with is whether to do that right away or not.

The argument for NOT doing it right away is this: I'm a SAHM, but Super Man has to go to work Monday through Friday, and with me planning on breastfeeding again, there's not much reason for Super Man to have to get up during the night. So if we put the baby in Super Boy's room right away, not only will Super Man hear the baby when she cries to be fed at night, but I'll be in and out of our bed and our bedroom every few hours to feed her. Super Man is usually a pretty deep sleeper, but not always, and once he's awake, he usually can't go back to sleep.

So the alternate plan was for Super Boy to stay in his room for the first few months after the baby comes and for the baby and I to set-up shop in the guest bedroom, since it's at the opposite end of the house from both my & Super Man's room and Super Boy's room, so they'd be less likely to be woken up by her crying and I'd be right there with her for feedings. If she's anything like Super Boy was, she'll be sleeping at least 6 hours by 10-12 weeks, so the bedroom changes should be able to be done by the end of the summer at the latest. There's just a few problems with the plan though.

First off, Super Boy has been spending most nights in the back bedroom for the past few months because he LOVES sleeping back there, and he's not crazy about having to go back to sleeping in his bed once the baby comes -- he wants to make the guest bedroom his new bedroom NOW. And I don't blame him. It's a great room, with windows on all sides, not to mention that there's a t.v. back there! (For any critics, Super Boy is only allowed to have the sleep timer on the t.v. for 15 minutes before bed and then it's lights out.)

Secondly, my nesting instincts are kicking in BIG TIME, and I'm having a super hard time NOT getting the baby's room ready. And what I mean by that is that we plan to paint Super Boy's room before it becomes Baby Super Girl's room, and there will undoubtedly be some minor decorating changes in there, and the thought of having to wait until the baby is 2-3 months old to make those changes is driving me batty. I LOVE the idea of sleeping in the back bedroom with her for the first several weeks for the convenience and to let the rest of the household sleep, and for the summer breeze from all those windows, but I want to have a finished bedroom for her sooner rather than later. I want to be able to put her clothes away (once) and just have a space that is all hers.

You might say, "well, why not just make the guest bedroom her bedroom?" That would be bad. Bad because that room is farthest from our bedroom, bad because it's a big bedroom and would be mostly wasted space as her bedroom for the next few years, and bad because Super Boy REALLY wants it to be HIS bedroom and I want this transition to be as smooth as possible for him, since he's been my only child for nearly 8 years and while he is thrilled about his baby sister coming, I know he's got some reservations about not being my only baby anymore. The more we can do to help him view the coming changes as positive, the better it will be all around.

Aside from that situation, we still don't have some of the things we "need" for the baby. As far as I know, there isn't going to be a baby shower this time around, so we're trying to spread out the necessary purchases a bit so as not to go broke all at once! I've been trying to borrow as much as I can, and to find gently used things as cheaply as possible through eBay, Craigslist, etc., but there are just some things that are going to have to be purchased. I have my list, I keep an eye on the sales and wait for coupons, and I buy them as I can. I'm sure we'll be ready to roll by May, but it still makes me a little anxious that we're not fully locked and loaded now.

In the meantime, I'm trying to allot more time in my days for just sitting and thinking about the new baby and how her arrival will change our lives in great and wonderful ways. I can't wait. :)

Yours,
SW