Blue Jean Baby

Nico shot up over the summer while he was in shorts. I knew he was growing, but I didn't notice quite how much. He's now as tall or taller than all his playmates, who range from a few months older to nearly a year older than he is, and some of those kids chart tall for their ages. I'm interested to see where he charts at his next well child visit. Anyway, when I got out his fall clothes I discovered that the 2T pants he wasn't quite big enough for at the end of the winter are now too short. Luckily, we have been the recipients of a lot of hand-me-downs, so I had a big tub of 3T clothes waiting in the closet. I prefer to dress Nico in clothes that are basically miniature versions of adult clothes. He hasn't worn a onesie since he turned one, and I only put him in floppy sweatpants if he needs something to sleep or nap in and pjs aren't handy. So ever since he had jeans that fit, he's been in jeans and little T-shirts. This season, though, none of the jeans we have fit him. I think the problem is that he's 3T-tall but still has a 2-year-old Buddha belly. I don't know if we got our hand-me-downs from exceptionally skinny kids or if kids are expected to be skinny by age three (or both), but Nico can't fit into any of the super cute jeans in his bin. Luckily, he has quite a few pairs of nice lined pants with pockets that look almost jeans-like and some REALLY cute structured cargo pants that I have already fallen in love with and want to put on him every day. Maybe we will survive our jeans-free season without resorting to sweatpants after all.

I am having similar wardrobe problems myself these days. I can still comfortably fit into the jeans I bought post-Nico which had gotten too big right before I got pregnant, and I have a pair of long khaki-colored pants and a pair of khaki-colored capri-length pants with yoga-pants type waistbands that I can wear for work when needed. Other than that, I've been making do with creative application of bella bands and long shirts while I'm still not big enough for full stretchy-panel maternity pants. Last pregnancy I made it through with several really cute under-belly style pairs of jeans and corduroys that my awesome friend Rachel sent me, but this time I'm finding my belly region isn't quite as firm as it was for round one. Oh, cruel gravity / time / deflation! Maybe those pants plus a bella band? We'll see. In the meantime, I'm just trying my best to look pregnant rather than full of burritos and not dress like a fashion victim.

I did finally get an official bump photo for this one's baby book other blog where I post schmoopy letters since I know better than to think I'd keep up with a baby book. The trilobite and transport at 16 weeks, 5 days:

I'm 18 weeks now and just last night officially decided that rumpus I was feeling while lying flat in bed was the baby and not digestion. With Nico I had an anterior placenta and had to wait until 22 weeks to feel anything and then it was just the slightest of nudges for quite some time. Hooray for evidence of continued habitation! So far the kid has been such a model tenant that I forget he or she is there sometimes. No loud parties, no trash on the lawn, no late night guests. I might owe a security deposit back when all this is over.


Reading:  Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz

Playing:  Howl by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Still here

Trucking along, having some fun, forgetting to blog. Soon, I hope!

Love-Hate

Things I Hate

1. I'm so incredibly bummed out that FX isn't offering a season pass for Sons of Anarchy on iTunes like so many other shows do for non-cable-having folks. Seriously, I WANT TO GIVE YOU MY MONEY. Please take my money. I just want my slightly dirty criminally-inclined hot biker fix, is that so much to ask?

2. People who wait through an entire red light before putting on their left turn signal. If you coast up to a red light and stop without putting on your signal, I'm going to guess that you're planning to keep going straight after the light turns green and I'm going to coast up behind you. If you signal left, I'll change lanes so I can be on my way. When you wait until the light turns green, then slowly roll forward six inches and turn on your signal, it honestly makes me want to punch you in the face. Generic "you," of course, since I'm sure no one I actually talk to does this…right?

3. When companies send emails with big exciting Huge Special Exclusive Awesome Sale! subject lines that turn out to be advertising 10 or 15% off. Sorry, retailers, I'm not going to run straight out to spend money after being inspired by your amazing 10% off offer.

Things I Love

1. The Ben & Jerry's 3.6 ounce single-serving cups. Every time I buy a pint, I end up absent-mindedly eating way more than my allotted fourth of the carton and not noticing until I feel slightly sick. I just wish our grocery carried more flavors in the tiny size, though I'm immensely pleased that I can get Cherry Garcia and Chocolate Fudge Brownie. Add Phish Food and I'm set for life.

2. The fact that I left a plate with a hot tuna and cheese sandwich on the arm of the couch and went to get Nico a cup of milk and came back to an intact sandwich. Indy did not steal it off the plate or even lick it while I left it unattended, even though he'll materialize at my feet begging the instant I open a can of tuna. Gold star, pooch!

3. My kid is becoming such a little person these days. There are still, thank goodness, moments and flashes of baby, but he's also this interesting, funny, chatty person and it blows my mind. And he shot up so much over the summer that his 2T jeans are high waters and all of a sudden his shoes got too small. So this week he's in 3T pants and size 9 shoes and he just looks so big. So big. It's not helping that I put him on a preschool waiting list for January this afternoon just in case we decide he's ready for some kind of big boy activity to keep him busy and feeling special while I'm occupied with the impending interloper.

4. This made me laugh so hard, mostly because you just know he got back up and did it again:

From Animals Being Dicks, of course.


Reading:  Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

Playing:  Nico's mix, mostly. He's very demanding persuasive.

September already?

Nico was overtired yesterday evening and ended up going to bed about 45 minutes early, so I decided to take advantage of the unexpected extra time and get some organizing done in our bedroom. I've been buying things here and there for months with the intention of saving them for Nico for Christmas, but I never remember what all I've bought. I pulled everything out of my closet and down from the catch-all storage bookcase, consolidated everything into two boxes for storage, and made a list in my phone of everything I have. By the time I got done with that, MB had dozed off on the couch. I was rolling along pretty well and didn't want to waste good decluttering momentum, so I decided to tackle organizing and decluttering the storage bookcase and the top of my dresser. The dresser-top felt particularly important because that's where we are planning to move the printer. Right now our router (I was going to say modem and really had to think about whether that was correct. Am old.), printer, stack of printer paper, and our Apple airport thingie are all on an end table in the guest room, and they'll need a new home once the guest room becomes a baby room.

I don't really love the idea of putting the giant printer on my dresser, mostly because I'm selfish and like being able to pile clothes there that fall into the "wore it but not enough to require washing" category. I also keep a small laundry basket up there as a holding facility for Nico's clean clothes since I almost always do laundry after he's in bed. I guess the clothes-piling could continue even with a printer taking up half, but Nico's basket would have to go somewhere else. If we do end up using the dresser for all the printery stuff, I'm thinking it might be nice to get some kind of two-tiered storage shelf so we can stack the printer on top of all the other stuff and save space. Another option might be to put a little shelf or cart thing in that space between the dresser and the wall, where MB currently piles his work clothes (he takes those back to work and turns them in to a laundry service). I think we could squeeze another small hamper into his closet along with our regular one, but he might not like that idea too much. So it'll come down to my space to pile clothes preference versus his how many hampers in the closet preference, I suppose. What do other people do who have a printer but no home office space?

After I got the dresser and bookcase done, I moved on to the stacked-up boxes along our bedroom wall, where they've been since way back when I cleaned out our hoarder-room and turned it into Nico's playroom. Apparently I am a rank amateur and yet again neglected to take any "before" pictures, thus robbing myself of the satisfaction of proving how much work I did. Here's a photo from the second-to-last phase of the process, after all the boxes were sorted but before I started moving them down to the basement:

I had originally planned to keep only the sentimental bits and pieces I could fit into one storage tub, but I ended up with a bunch of stuff that I didn't feel was important enough to go into long-term storage in the attic but that I also wasn't quite ready to throw out. It's that category of stuff that has stalled me on this project at least twice, so this time I decided to cut myself a little slack. I did get rid of a few boxes of stuff, between the Goodwill pile and the recycle pile and the throw-away pile. The not-precious but not-worthless stuff only filled one office paper box after all, which feels pretty reasonable. That box, a box of games and electronics stuff that I wasn't sure about, a box of photo frames and photo albums with no homes, and a box of papers to sort and file went down to be stored in the basement. That left me with only what you see in the photo below, which is such an improvement. The boxes to the left in this picture are full of things destined to be consigned, posted to Craigslist for sale, or donated to Goodwill. The green tub is the definitely-keeping keepsakes box and is going to the attic. The boxes on top of the green tub are full of odds and ends that need to be distributed to other parts of the house. The blue tub over on the far right and the box on top of it are maternity clothes that I don't quite need yet.

Looking at this, I'm realizing the windows look weird and bare. We had two-tier white old lady curtains that came with the house up until about six months ago when I finally got sick of how much dust and dog hair they collected, took them down to wash them, and never put them back up. I don't really care all that much about window treatments and wouldn't mind keeping the bare blinds indefinitely, but I think MB prefers curtains. Someday maybe we'll get around to de-wallpapering our room and painting, and then we can buy or have my mom make curtains to match. In the meantime, no one is going to see the windows but us, so I'm not too concerned. And oh, God, that dreamcatcher is really tacky and embarrassing and cringeworthy, right? Every time I take a picture in there I think about taking it down, but I got it in Arizona when I was twelve, during the biggest family vacation my parents ever took us on, and I can't help myself, I'm ridiculously sentimentally attached to it.

This huge project has never just been about getting rid of stuff. That's part of it, obviously, but it's more about learning to occupy less space. It's about living in a way that is better for Nico, who needs room to grow, and for MB, who feels stressed and unhappy in a cluttered environment. I guess ultimately it's about appreciating who is in my life more than what is in it, as horribly schmoopy as that sounds. So when I finished around 11:45, even though my back was achy and I had dust up my nose, I felt like playing a triumphant anthem and doing a victory lap. Piece by piece, it's getting done.

Photo Friday