I’ve been stuck in a whirlwind of nesting these days.
Part of this has to do with spray season being over, I’m sure. I made applesauce and cooked red beets and froze tomatoes and shampooed rugs (with my sister’s help–I certainly couldn’t have done that without her help, mostly because an inquisitive little almost-two-year-old who always likes to “help”) and scrubbed floors and cleaned bathrooms and washed and folded sheets and made food for just the three of us (!) and canned pizza sauce and ordered a few newborn outfits (little Z lived in three sleepers for the first two weeks of his life–back in the days when I could do laundry every two days) and redid a feminine bassinet into a masculine black plaid and squeezed in naps as often as possible and even waddled in to my midwife appointment a reasonable ten minutes early.
It’s been two weeks, folks.
Two weeks ago, I held out my phone to take a family “ussie” to commemorate the first morning waking up alone.
These weeks have been blurry and slightly sleepy. A little boy who used to faithfully sleep through the night has–ever since my sinus infection and the resulting concern for my well-being–woken up more nights than not to ask after Mommy. It’s endearing and exhausting, and sometimes I feel like I can hardly hold my eyes open and my temper in check until naptime.
Spray season took a lot out of me this year–probably in large part due to me being third trimester pregnant.
“I don’t think I could’ve handled it as well as you,” my midwife told me.
“I don’t know that I did it very well,” I protested. “I mostly just hid out in my room when I couldn’t handle it anymore.”
“That sounds like handling it well,” she insisted.
“Well, I hid out in my room a lot.”
I did. I even instituted time alone with Little Z in his bedroom each day when it became apparent that overstimulation was a big deal for him as well as Mommy–little HSP that he is. Bank runs and drives to my parents’ each week became havens of rest and air conditioning. In the mornings, Little Z and I would make treks down the road and come back sweaty but refreshed by the solitude.
Don’t get me wrong. He loved having constant playmates. He would beg to go downstairs with his buddies every day during this “bedroom time.”
But Mommy, in her wisdom (and exhaustion), would enforce that alone time. Because if she didn’t, by bedtime, a certain little nineteen-month old was less than reasonable. (Notice how adept Mommy is at talking about herself in the third person. She never thought she’d be one of those, and yet, here she is. A-HEM!)
So at the risk of seeming like a Grinch, I hid myself away as much as possible during that hard, overwhelming, exhausting month.
I’ve been so ready–so more than ready–for Baby the Second to arrive. Spray season made this even more apparent. I’m tired of being pregnant. People who talk about a “pregnancy glow,” obviously don’t know much about third trimester. Sure, I’m glowing. And with this heat, I’m also glistening. Neither one feels very glamorous.
But the kicks and the wiggles and the squirms and the barrel rolls have been so much fun. He’s a wiggle worm that’s currently the size of a pineapple “He’s going to be a wild one,” I predicted to Mr. N. I don’t know if Little Z was this active, but I certainly don’t remember it.
I threw a load of baby things into the washer this morning. Little outfits that almost make me squirm with excitement. I just want to coo over baby clothes and there’s not even a baby in them.
Yep. Nesting.
So I’m gonna be thirty-five weeks along tomorrow and I feel like a whale washed up somewhere in the tropics, glistening and glowing and wishing that this heat wave would end already.
But I’m also just so, so excited.
Because BABY CLOTHES!
And very, very shortly, a baby to put in them!
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