August 21, 2008
Making Room
So...ah...how do I say this? We...ah...put together the crib Monday night.
Why is that embarrassing? Why does it feel so weird to admit? Why does this feel like a confession? Why is the best word I can come up with to describe the process of setting up an unborn baby's room "presumptous"?
I guess deep down (or maybe not so deep), it still seems odd and perhaps a bit foolish of me to assume we're actually going to get a baby out of this whole thing. Honestly, rationally, I really really really believe we are, but I guess it just still seems so...early? No, that's not it. Self-indulgent? No, not that either. That it feels like we're "playing house" when we're really just kids ourselves? Maybe a little. Or that I've thought about, pictured, fantasized, fetishized these milestones for so long that I can't actually believe they're happening, to me, right now, for reals? Yes, that's it exactly.
I mean, holy cow, we have a CRIB. In our HOUSE. What's up with that?!
Simon needed a martini to get him through the transition. I recovered the next day with a Filet o' Fish. We all have our crutches.
Maybe the Jews have it right and our living space should stay baby-stuff-free until there's an actual baby here. If nothing else, it would keep our living room from looking like this, except it's now three times as bad, it being two months since that photo was taken and hence two months during which all that crap those essentials have frequently and lustily engaged in hot, plastic orgies without condoms, a side-effect of which is the crap multiplied all by itself, I swear. Well, that plus all the shopping we've done because ohmygodlookatthelittlehatwithears and it'sahoodedtowelembroideredwithpirateducks!PIRATE DUCKS! MUST! HAVE!
Not that all that stuff has been sitting in our living room and ew, reproducing for two months, oh no. We'd shoved it all into the tiny front office, where, all stacked on top of itself and hidden behind closed doors, it didn't occur to us that we'd have a space problem later on. Later on being now.
Over the course of several days this week, we've moved the library from the sunroom to the front office so we could move the nursery into the sunroom, which meant we had to move all the baby stuff into the living room before we could set it up in the nursery (got all that?) except, oops, the nursery is also tiny (about 6x9 feet), which means it fits exactly one crib, one tiny changing table, one orange velvet settee, and eventually one small human boychild. There is no room for the bouncer and the rocker and the Boppy and the bath seat and the bath mat and the highchair and the stroller and the carseat and the Ergo and the books and ALL the clothes and ALLLL the blankets...And we don't even have any monstrous plastic toys to contend with yet.
I know that most of this stuff will be spread throughout the house when it's actually in use, but until then I'm just not sure what to do with it all. It seems wrong to let it clutter up my pweshus nursery nest, although that's certainly a better alternative (or at least less weird) to storing the bath seat in the bathtub and the Boppy on the rocking chair and the carseat in the car and the stroller in the trunk and the cosleeper in the bed and the highchair at the kitchen table for the next four months. Right?
Speaking of the highchair, we couldn't resist setting it up for just a few hours (okay, a few days) merely to confirm how bitchin' it looks in the kitchen. (It matches perfectly while clean and not covered in pureed whatever, which is awesome because that's the main reason we got it. No price comparisons, no safety research, no what-kind-of-highchair-did-Christina-Aguilera-get; we just thought it would look cool in our house and yeah, it totally does.) (Also, it was $35! Suck it, Graco!)
Simon added some props for realism. Click to see the notes on Flickr.
Woohoo to having a crib!
Love the stage-ready highchair, although I've noticed a disturbingly high number of sharp implements the baby would have access to :)
Posted by: water sign at August 21, 2008 07:18 PMAfter staying at your house, this seems so REAL.
Squee!
Posted by: Angella at August 21, 2008 07:42 PMOh yay! It's all so much fun, why not indulge?!!
Posted by: Elizabeth at August 21, 2008 07:52 PMI totally get the embarrassment. I felt that way about maternity clothes. Like the first time I put them on, I felt like I'd let a really embarrassing secret out of the bag. I held off wearing them, heck even BUYING them, for as long as humanly possible. I have no idea why I felt so shy and embarrassed, but I did.
Posted by: Kate @ Life As I Live It at August 21, 2008 09:45 PMI just wanted to say I totally understand your feelings about the baby room - I get the same way about anything I want perhaps too much (not that you want your own kid too much, you are following me, right?) Small pathetic example - we're going on a much needed vacation in 2 weeks - one that I've been planning for like oh say six months, at several times since then I've thought for sure we'd have to cancel it - and even now that it's just 2 weeks away, I'm still kinda like, "Yeah I'll believe it when I see me there," you know? Sometimes no matter how obvious it is that we're getting what we want, we have to remind ourselves we might not get it, justincase, so that if the Gods aren't with us this time we won't be as hurt. Your situation being obviously far more of a big deal than mine. :P
Posted by: Jen E at August 22, 2008 05:30 AMI get the embarrassment too. I still feel like a BIG FAT LIAR whenever I tell people the news. And I am completely dreading telling my coworkers. For some reason, I feel like they will all laugh at me or recoil in horror: "YOU'RE having a BABY?!"
WHY do I feel like that?!? I'm 31-f*cking-years old!!!
Posted by: jive turkey at August 22, 2008 05:44 AMAs a Member of the Tribe, I too didn't bring anything into our house before Fussbot arrived. But once he was home, I STILL felt weird about buying baby stuff even though I had an actual baby to shop for. How weird is that?
Posted by: Eleanor Q. at August 22, 2008 07:18 AMAs a Member of the Tribe, I too didn't bring anything into our house before Fussbot arrived. But once he was home, I STILL felt weird about buying baby stuff even though I had an actual baby to shop for. How weird is that?
Posted by: Eleanor Q. at August 22, 2008 07:18 AMJust wait till it's time to take the crib down....
Posted by: iamnot at August 22, 2008 07:55 AMOoh, I totally felt embarrassed about my maternity clothes too! (And still do sometimes, now that I'm fitting into some of the more, er, tentlike and smocky styles.) And I felt like a total goon telling my coworkers, afraid that they'd laugh and think it was a joke. (Fear not unfounded, as the first person I showed the u/s photo too thought there was a site online that would photoshop your name onto an u/s image and I was just trying to pull a fast one on everybody. Nice.)
I guess it's that pregnancy has always been something that happened to OTHER people, and it's a hard adjustment to make when all of a sudden I'm Other People.
Posted by: Leah at August 22, 2008 09:31 AMSounds ready to me! Nice job!
Posted by: K at August 22, 2008 12:14 PMSimon has a sick sense of humor. Which I love.
Glass and scissors and choking hazards, oh my!
What? No matches?
Posted by: Jemima at August 22, 2008 12:15 PMI'm with Jemima and disappointed there isn't a flame thrower or a switchblade.
Posted by: Emily at August 22, 2008 02:34 PMI had those same feelings about buying stuff. I felt like I having panic attacks every time we went baby stuff shopping. I don't think we ended up buying stuff until I was seven months along b/c of my weirdness.
I was subbing at the time so didn't have any co-workers to tell. Instead, I got to bond with 13 year olds who were also pregnant. Yikes!
Posted by: Carrie at August 22, 2008 05:01 PMI had the same feeling when the stuff started creeping into other areas of the house (Im jewish-Im all for not tempting fate but I am too much of a control freak to follow this one). It was real, there is a baby coming, and I get to keep it! Strange and so damn fantastic.
Good luck making your space feel like your own without looking like primary colored plastic crap is taking over. Ugh- that part is not as fun.
Why, that's a dump truck full of awesome!
Oh yes, the "essentials" will spread throughout your house. But it won't seem like less. Especially when you're walking to the bathroom at night, or going in to check on the baby. That's when the Sharp Things make their presence known.
Posted by: Texas T-bone at August 23, 2008 03:18 PMLemon zest Kix fondue. I can totally see it. In chocolate.
Posted by: Kerri Anne at August 25, 2008 12:10 PM
