Making progress

 I felt like we were very behind in prepping for this baby going into the weekend. May sound silly seeing as we still have 5 months until we bring the baby home and we already have a months worth of diapers, but you have to have a better point of reference I think. We are the people who bought William's furniture on Craig's list (for a STEAL!) before a doctor ever confirmed the pregnancy. We also had his room painted before I was 20 weeks pregnant. It turned out to be a lifesaver that we were so ahead of the game seeing as at 32 weeks I was rendered useless (bed rest) and 2 days after I was useful again he was born. Imagine if we had waited until the third trimester to get on the ball!

So, I've felt like we needed to make some progress in the oh-so-important nursery. Babies need more than just love and care, after all. Ok - so it's not THAT dire, but it is one of the most fun parts of pregnancy for me -- a new closet to organize, a room to clean out and Re-design...it's all music to my ears. 

Now with Christmas behind us and our dog sitting days over (I've purposely refrained from talking about that...) this weekend we decided to make some progress. 

We previously had a pretty nice guest room set up. Critics informed me the bed was great, drawer and closet space was a plus and all we needed was a TV. Well, that's gonna have to wait because we had to get rid of the comfy bed to prepare for the baby. A couple of months ago some people at church were hosting a garage sale to benefit a mission trip to Africa, and a couple from our D group was in need of a bed. So - we sold our guest bed to them and gave the money to the mission trip garage sale. It was pretty efficient! That left us with a somewhat empty room...if you consider all of the junk that had been hiding under the bed and occupying the closet now sitting in the middle of the room 'empty'. How do we accumulate so much crap?? Guess that's for another day.

Saturday Austin got in our garage rafters (translation: our storage area) and got down William's crib. The Craig's list steal is paying off dividends now! And with the eager help of big brother Austin got the crib set up.

(You thought I was kidding about all of the C R A P didn't you??)

Oh - and someone thinks the crib is quite entertaining 

I sorted through the stuff to determine what belongs in the room (diapers, clothes, gifts baby has received), what belongs somewhere TBD (very well may be the top of the closet), and what belongs at goodwill. After I did that the room had some space to breathe.

We really didn't like giving up our guest room. We LOVE that we have so many people who spend their precious vacation time and money to come visit us and we really enjoy being able to host them in our home. But, unless God had granted us twins, we knew we weren't going to be moving into a 4 bedroom house so we didn't have much of a choice there. But, with the bedrooms being of decent size we realized we didn't have to give it up entirely. We saw a couch at Costco that would fit the space perfectly and could convert into a bed very easily. (So easily William had already done it 10 times) it's fairly comfortable to lay on, and in the event it's not comfortable enough I'm pretty sure there's a big brother who would gladly trade rooms with the guests :) so once my sorting project was done we made our way to Costco to grab the couch before they changed their inventory.

While the initial thought behind the couch was for sleeping space, after we thought through it we decided it'd be pretty useful. We love our bedtime routine with William and there were many nights when one of us laid on his floor while the other read books in the glider. I'm envisioning beautiful, peaceful evenings of the 4 of us curled up on the couch reading books before bed. (Stay tuned to find out how life with 2 kids may turn my dreams upside down) But, even if the vision isn't quite on target I do think we will spend a lot of time in the room and it'll be nice to have a place for all of us to sit.

And when people need to sleep...

We may get a cushioned mattress pad/cover to slip over it before we put sheets on so the cracks aren't so apparent. But it's not too bad to lay on - I may even be willing to give up my tempurpedic if guests act right :)

So - now we have 2 nightstands to repurpose, a couple of storage bins to find new homes for, and some baby stuff ready to be organized. The curtains will come down, the corner ladder will likely go, and there's a box of stuff ready to find its way to goodwill. I'd say we had a productive weekend and I almost feel like we are on track now.

Now to just find out the gender...then the real nursery fun can begin!

P.S. William tried to sneak out of his room last night to go sleep on Archie's couch. He was pretty disappointed when we caught him! More on the nickname Archie another day.