Sunday, July 10, 2011

Productive

It's probably a good thing Buddha Baby hasn't arrived yet, because I feel so much more ready as of this weekend.

Friday was my last day of work--I had a couple weeks to train my new coworker (replacing my old coworker who left at the end of February and will be my coverage during my maternity leave).  Feels so odd to know that I'm out of there for 4 months.  I know I'll be working my butt off during that time, but I've never had that much time 'off' before--there's always been work or school or a combination of the two.

Darren finished rewiring the upstairs of our house!  I think he officially finished Tuesday or Wednesday of last week.  He absolutely rocks--has basically been working 2 jobs since the project started just about 2 months ago with some help from his dad some weekends.  Darren is not an electrician but has been studying up on the subject since we moved in as it was something he was really hoping to accomplish on his own (versus paying someone else up to 10K to do the job).  Our house was basically 85% knob & tube wiring.  All the upstairs has now been upgraded and when you live in a 1940's house this is huge.  We have access to 6 outlets in the kitchen now--we used to have access to 1 (move aside the dirty dishes to plug in the coffee maker, then move that aside if you want toast, or if you want to use the blender, or food processor...).  An outlet for our built-in dishwasher is in (yet to be installed).  We used to have an ungrounded outlet in our bathroom, right above our sink--um, that's a big no no.  A new light for our deck.  Recessed light in the closet that turns on with a switch instead of a bare bulb and pull string.  Additional outlets in the bedrooms...  In addition to wanting to be able to add insulation to our attic, we have been wanting to upgrade our kitchen.  Once we have our wiring inspected, we'll be at a point where we can focus on swapping out our current stove and rollaway dishwasher for a convection stove, gas cook-top (we had someone come in to take care of extending our gas line), and built-in dishwasher.  We've got a nice looking stand alone unit from Ikea which will hold our new stove and cook-top.  We'll put in new counters to replace our ratty linoleum counters we've put up with.  And we'll put in a new sink and faucet.  Fun stuff!

With the upstairs rewiring finished, Darren thought we should use this weekend to babify our house.  Great idea!  We were able to store some of our extra furniture at D's parent's house which made room for more storage in the basement and garage which meant we could clear out the extra boxes we had in the nursery.  The crib is now up and the space certainly looks more like a nursery/office instead of just an office/storage-of-a-lot-of-crap room.  I use the word 'we', but really it was Darren and his parents who dealt with all the moving of furniture and boxes.  I went to my yoga class as usual and spent a lot of time with my feet up on the glider.  Okay, I did fold a lot of baby clothes since a ton of baby clothes loads were done over the last few days since I finally purchased storage bins to organize the larger clothing we've been handed down and gifted.

The carseat is in the car too!  39 weeks 6 days is a good time to check that off the list, right?  It's a good thing Buddha Baby didn't come early with everything that has just recently been accomplished.  Is this how it goes for most expectant parents?  I see pictures of these 'perfect' nurseries on-line and wonder if these parents have that much more time/money than us or was it just a bigger priority (most likely a bigger house as well)?  I mean, our kiddo won't even be sleeping in his crib for a while as we'll be co-sleeping.  He won't care if the walls are red/tan for a while longer instead of yellow.  Or that we have a few extra piles of paperwork on the desk instead of nicely organized on wall shelving that hasn't been purchased yet.  Will he? 

So, now that my maternity leave has started, will I get to enjoy it at all?  I have my 40 week visit tomorrow with the midwives.  Wonder if they'll be able to tell me if I'm any closer to actual labor.  I have a list of useful and/or fun things to do during maternity leave:  take care of officially changing my last name (it's only been 6 months since we got married), get the car seat checked out, get my brows done, go swimming, read up on patching drywall holes (oh wait, that was another thing that Darren and his Dad worked on this weekend so I can check that off my list), nap...

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