Congratulations Mom - 26 years later

So when I was a child, my mom was very insistent upon us putting away our clothes asap after they arrived, folded, in our room (we usually did the folding downstairs ourselves, and then whomever was near the laundry basket brought them up and distributed).

This was not so hard for me. What was VERY hard was keeping my drawers neat. I've never been able to accomplish this. No matter how often I organize them into cute, folded stacks, rearrange, etc., my drawers always look like someone put them in the drawer by standing across the room and shooting scrunched up handfuls of them in, basketball style. I have a friend who tells me its because the rest of my life is so organized, there has to be something, somewhere to slip up :)

In fact, my mother got so mad at me at least once when I was little for not having neat drawers, that she took everything out of my dresser, threw it on the floor and made me put it all back in. A very handy technique to inspire automatic neatness :)

I am here to tell you mom, that my wild ways have changed - I now have organized drawers!!! Partly because I finally started rotating my seasonal (or in my current case, maternity/non maternity) clothes, partly because we bought some marvelous boxes to use in our closets instead of trying to stack clothes on the top shelves which neither of us can reach.  Thanks to the marvelousness of Ikea, I should say. I've included a photo for proof of my new system. My skivvies drawer is also organized, but I figured I didn't want to make that permanent record on the inter-webs for my kids to find in 47 years :)

I'm feeling like our house is really, truly organized. We have so little storage space, it's not like I really had that much work cut out for me - but all three of our closets are good to go, our spare dresser in our guest room has two drawers cleared, I've donated old clothes to goodwill, our basement received a thorough (and shocking) clean out back in October, and I finally spent the ten bucks to buy a spice rack and get our large quantity of spices out of the back of the pantry next to the iron pans.

Next, and probably near the end of the organization list (until the baby items start arriving en-masse) is adding an extra shelf to our one kitchen cabinet at floor level. I also need a handy place to store my chemical cleaning stuff for the bathrooms - currently just sitting next to one of our toilets...not a good idea, I know. I'm thinking a bucket at the top of one of our closets might do the trick. We have no storage space in our bathroom and our linen closet is beautifully organized, but packed to the gills with only floor-level space left, also not so safe.

We were originally planning on painting our babe's room this past weekend, but we realized two things: it takes more joint compound than you think it does to joint a wall, a ceiling, and all corners of said ceiling and wall, and b) even if you have enough joint compound, you can't expect it to dry when it's only 42 degrees in that room all day, every day. The compound instructions said it dries within 24 hours --- at a temp of 75 degrees. Woops! So we'll be taking some time this week to do even MORE joint compounding, sanding, sponging, priming, and, eventually, painting. We'll be putting up some chair rail when Tim's dad visits in a few weeks - though that begs the question, with our very old house: do we level the chair rail with the uneven floor, the uneven ceiling, or actually level it around the room? I don't know.

While we waited for joint compound to dry, we instead put together our Ikea furniture, so when the room is done we'll hoof it on in there! These are stock photos, but they look as good as the real thing! Crib not put together yet, but that takes up the most space, so that'll be after we finish painting the room, probably. Oh, and I should clarify. By "we put together" I mean that Tim put together while I read him entertaining things from SuperFreakonomics, the Caveman's Guide to Baby's First Year, and Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue. All entertaining in different ways.

You probably want to hear something about the baby, not just how I've endlessly been preparing for him. He's started to move around a LOT. I'm supposed to start fetal kick count monitoring this week, but I haven't yet, and I was thinking, crap, I don't know if he really moves 10 times every hour - partly because I don't notice very much when he does, and because before it went in spurts - his sleep cycles, as it were. Not so much now. He's probably still sleeping, but not so motionless. I'm sure he'd hit that 10 every hour number. There's one spot at the top right of my belly that he kicks the most, and sometimes I poke him back. Encouraging turn the other cheek retaliation early in life, you see :)

And last but not least, we think we've settled on a name. No, we won't be sharing it, but we're feeling pretty confident about it. No, it's not Grover. Or Wilmer. It might be Jasper.

I know this is getting long, but I thought I'd add one more thing which I somehow forgot to mention yet - we found a pediatrician's office that I am in love with! It's about a quarter of a mile from my OB/GYN, which is a mile from where I work, both of which are 15 minutes max from our house. They came recommended by my midwife, but no one I know actually goes there, so I was a little unsure. They have all of the things I was looking for though - small practice, PAs or NPs as well as physicians, at least one male doctor (there's two), very, very open and personable - won't think of me as the "uninformed and/or anxious mom" but rather as a partner in care for our little one, strict on vaccinations, and, oh yes, a super-fun waiting area. Their hours flex into the evenings and on weekends, which works out for us quite well. Also, the PA I met with's name is Joaquin. I think that's how you spell it, anyway!