Nailed It

In the same vein as my previous entry, these are the things I think we've done awesomely well that we wouldn't change:

• pick a unique but viable nursery theme
• pick a name that's special but not too weird
• use the Pack and Play for an in-bedroom sleeper while the baby is young enough to wake up multiple times during the night
• ask for diapers and wipes on the registries so we are stocked up
• have the front room set up for receiving visitors 
• take tons of pictures
• People from work did a schedule the first week we were home of bringing dinner by the house - and it was AMAZINGLY helpful
• Don't stress. Even the parts that were rougher worked out. 

If We Did it Again...

What things would you do or want to do differently if you could do it all over again? This goes whether you're planning on having kids again or not since, let's face it, we'll all at least have folks in our lives at some point who can benefit from the advice.

I imagine this list will grow over time, but so far, we've come up with:

• Be rich enough to stay home with the kiddo (yeah, I didn't say it would be realistic)
• Get a nursing cover that's a bit better so nursing in public is easier (close enough to weaning now that it just isn't worth it at this point)... not that I'm sure it would help since Pike simply hates being covered while eating. We usually go for bottles or cereal out in public for that reason.
• Get more pictures printed and hung on the walls sooner
• Have the nursery done two months in advance (apparently that's how we roll)
• I'd probably put more clothing on the registries for a wide variety of ages
• Wes said that he'd definitely pack the recovery room/delivery bag earlier... which he'd wanted to do anyway. D'oh.
• Put our new knowledge of what baby products work and which ones don't to good use - which means better wish list planning and use of money
• Get a cosleeper since that would have been nice to have, especially early on
• Stock up on wipes as well as diapers - for some reason we did great on one but not the other. They go hand in hand, though, so I'm not sure how we missed that one. 
• My hubby also pitched in that he'd get a membership to CareFlite. Just in case. Would have saved us several thousand dollars, so I can't disagree at all.

Hmmm....

May have some interesting news to share before too long. Meanwhile supporting the Etsy artists on my sidebar is WIN. Cuz they all deserve it :)

Thinkin' and Wishin'

It's fascinating how frightening and exciting at the same time that it is getting closer to time. We haven't set a date yet. We're still paying down credit cards and getting ourselves all prepared. It's nice knowing that we're preparing. It's nice knowing that the time will come even if we aren't sure precisely when the time is.

It's also scary. I wonder some days whether I'll be a good mom. Okay, a lot of days. Sometimes I'm certain. Sometimes I know I'll do just fine, that I can take care of someone else and still keep my sanity. Then some days I'm run ragged and wonder how I can do work and keeping everything sane at home AND have a baby, not to mention how to pay for things like childcare. It scares me how much that costs!

But we'll figure it out. Somehow, we'll figure it out.

Wanting

I'm having one of those weeks where my want outweighs my common sense a bit. My body is ready, though my mind knows we need to get prepared still and work to where we need to go. It frustrates me a bit that every time we get on track, finances get in the way. We are, however, getting better. We're getting smarter and more practical, and we're on track. I'm just not having a patient week or two.

To Do

Things to do before we have a baby:

• Get our finances in order - We're actually well on our way to this, we just need to keep paying down debts like we're doing. Go us!

• Put wood floors down in the "animal room" - That will be the nursery, and there's no way I'm letting a kid onto those nasty carpets.

• Accumulate baby stuff - Slowly purchase some of the stuff we need so it doesn't all hit at once expense wise.

• Go through old kid stuff - Box up and label my legacy stuff so that it's ready for storage or kid use when the time comes.

Planning

I'm a planner. It doesn't always work, but I like to plot, to plan, to make sure I know what I'm doing before I do it.

So thinking about having a baby is definitely a surprise even to me. I never pictured myself reproducing. Quite the opposite. I was content to let my friends do it, to let them deal with the difficulty and the pain and the annoyance. And then one day I realized that I liked the idea of parts of having a kid and that, worse, I was slowly coming to like more and more of them.

This threw my personal perception off kilter in a serious way, and I admit that I'm not done entirely feeling off kilter yet. But my wonderful geeky guy and I have talked, and we're doing it. Not yet, but we are. Right now, we're planning the things we want done, figuring things out, and making sure to take care of us first. When the time comes, we'll have to put ourselves a bit further back on the priority list than we're used to.

Long story short? This is a blog (currently private) where we can spill all our thoughts and feelings and random rambling about having a child and expanding our family.