Well here we are, 32 weeks (almost 33) weeks pregnant with number 2. How is it even possible that this pregnancy feels like it truly has gone by so fast? I truly do try and pause often and just soak it all in. I don't think a third one is in our future (but you never know!) so I want to truly treasure these weeks.
About 7.3 weeks to go, and we have... not much ready. But yet, I don't feel that nervous about it? Maybe a little but not much? It's like with the first baby prep, we had no idea what we were walking into and had no idea what we needed, so I felt a lot more anxious. I coped by making sure our nursery was ready well in advance. Well, this time around we have to shuffle some things around. We decided to move our oldest down the hall so she has more room to grow as she ages (didn't make sense really to give the little baby brother a bigger room than his older sister). So we are in the midst of remodeling that room down the hall for my daughter. Once that is done (almost), and she's moved in, we can forge ahead with final preparation on the nursery. We have zero furniture and I keep procrastinating on that. We have a crib someone luckily gave to us so we just have to match furniture to that and roll with it. It will get there! Plus, now we know that baby truly won't need the nursery anyway til he is 3-5 months old when he transitions out of the bassinet in our room.
In addition to the bedroom remodeling, our kitchen refrigerator also is kicking the dust-- which you may think, ok, just buy a new fridge. And it surely COULD have been that simple EXCEPT the silly architects of this house thought it would be brilliant to box in the fridge with cabinets and countertop- leaving very limited and small room and choices for what fridge we can get next. So, another remodel we undergo. We (well, I supervised- hubby did), tore down the cabinets (no cabinets were harmed), leaving our dying fridge just kinda hanging out there awkwardly. All our stuff that was in those cabinets is is random boxes as if we are moving, making it super fun. AND THEN we find out when we start fridge shopping that apparently refrigerators are the hot thing right now and hard to come by because of COVID and manufacturing/shipping issues- so most are on backorder til the new year. Cool. We still bit the bullet and took a chance on one we found from Lowe's, so lets pray it actually comes when it is supposed to so we can start putting our kitchen back together! Something about pregnancies in this house and major remodels. With our first pregnancy, I broke our oven- so we had to replace our oven & microwave, plus the nursery remodel AND remodeling our dining room into a playroom- whew! So if we do ever get pregnant a third time, I guess that leaves the dishwasher and a few other rooms to choose from to remodel!
Everyone always asks me if my daughter is ready for baby... It's so hard to say. I mean who is ready for baby? She is 2 and 3 months, and every single day she surprises me with something new she has learned. She is able to understand complex commands now, is demonstrating caring, nurturing, responsibility... She knows there is a baby boy inside of mommy but I don't think she's fully grasped the fact that there is a baby that will be arriving into her world soon. She recognizes the baby has a soul though, I think, for example today she sat on top of me and I groaned in protest and said "You sat on the baby!" and she said "Ooops, sorry baby!" We are trying to prep her as much as possible for understanding the fact that there will be a baby crying, we will have to be quiet sometimes, mommy will be holding another baby and most importantly, breastfeeding the baby. Abby hasn't breastfed since 14 months (about a year ago), so I hope there aren't any jealousy issues- but we will handle that as it comes! So is she ready? I guess as ready as we are! It will be amazing to see their interactions with each other and to see how she is nurturing him.
Besides all that, life is revving up in intensity but also slowing down. My work life is revving up in terms of I need to get all my projects in a stable enough spot to be able to hand them off, but also I don't want to pick up new projects either. I am earning a really important certification through work this fall- I have already passed through one big project and one exam- and have three more exams to go. In 7 weeks. No big lol. So my brain feels like it will explode most days at work, but then on the flipside, life is significantly changing again on a personal level, and not just because baby is coming. COVID is ramping up in intensity at an ALARMING level, with new cases in my state (Pennsylvania) ranging around 5,000 per day. It is worse now than it was in the beginning of COVID. Granted we know more about it now, are more prepared, AND we are testing more people thus more numbers- but I still am confident in saying we are seeing more cases than we did back in April. But yet the world still is turning here, stores are still open with not many protocols, restaurants are open for dine in still, schools are open, some aren't. But given the fact that I am now almost 33 weeks pregnant, my husband and I have decided to "hunker back down" as a family unit as much as we can. Which is hard. So hard. I compare it to a diet. We all went on a diet in the spring because we HAD to, but we were all in it together. Then in the summer things relaxed a little and we all had a few donuts (okay a lot), i.e. we went out to restaurants, the beach, family outings, etc... and we got lucky. But now our family has decided to go back on that diet which is so hard after binging on all the things, and not everyone is doing it. Its hard not to go out to eat when the restaurants are open, as opposed to when the restaurants were closed in the Spring and we had no choice anyway. But, we are coping and it is a little easier as it gets colder as there isn't much to do anyway. We have lots of food packed in our freezer and will be staying in as much as we can, besides necessary grocery shopping and doctor appointments. As a nurse and with my gut feeling, I don't think COVID is going away any time soon. It's proven to be way too aggressive of a virus. It blows my mind to think back to my mindset back in March 2020 when we all thought this would just be a few weeks. Then we all thought, ok- maybe just till Summer. Now it's truly settling in that we are looking more like years. We still mourn normalcy like having normal date nights and going to the movies, not worrying about germs all the time, going out to eat without feeling like we are doing something wrong, not having to mask...but slowly we are just going to adapt to this just being the new normal. Our daughter already thinks it is normal to check our temperature every day- If we forget she literally asks to do it, forehead AND ears lol. She will likely grow up with her first few years of life thinking its completely normal that everyone wears masks. It will be very interesting to see how this will change their generation, how it will change ours... I think this could be a time period that gets referred to. Similar to how we refer to "the Great Depression", we will refer to this set of years, yes years, as "COVID".
Well, I could probably continue word vomiting out my thoughts, but its lunch time here and I have a hungry toddler! I hope to write again before baby comes!
Thank you for reading,
Love, the New MotherBoard
