Nursery part one

So yesterday we started in on the nursery. Carl took the first swing at it, setting up the crib and moving furniture around until he found an arrangement he thought would work, which includes room for the change table once we retrieve it.

Afterwards he played a video game for over an hour and said to me he didn't know how I managed to pack everything up. Well my trick was pretty simple: I had big rubbermaid-type chests and I just placed things in quickly while loud music played in the background. But - yeah.

I took the second shift and started with the aforementioned big chests: one for clothes and one for blankets and towels and crib sheets, as we were given large quantities of all of the above (thanks to a set of twins in the family, I actually have *20* crib sheets. I would give some away but the parents of the twins are pregnant again, so I'll be giving some back anyways).

I also took a smaller container to sort out anything too girly (to save on stranger/acquaintance confusion), or anything that I felt was special to Emily. As it turned out I'd done a good special-to-Emily sort already and so really there was only the pink consideration. After some discussion within the system flowers were deemed okay for anything under 6 months.

It turns out (and I really couldn't remember) that the vast majority of baby things we have are white or yellow and so will do fine. It was hard, touching all the clothes again, smelling them to be sure they weren't musty, seeing how I'd cut a lot of the tags out so they wouldn't itch. It felt at times like I was dooming Noah to Emily's fate, by allowing preparations to take place. I understand cultures that don't do that, now, although I really hope those cultures also help new mothers cope with bringing in a layette while they're post-partum.

I felt caught between past and future, which I guess would have made it the present. I only held one outfit up to my belly though, and that was enough. Right now they're mostly just *stuff*.

An odd thing is because Emily was born in March and her shower was in January, most of her things ended up being heavier, except the ubiquitous diaper shirts. I remember that at the time I thought "hmm, probably we'll end up buying 3-6 month old outfits because we'll want summer weight." But now because Noah's due Sept 1, it's entirely possible that he will fit those when it's fall and be in the right season.

I have to say again that the generosity of our friends and family was simply overwhelming. I mean here we are completely stocked for our baby and when I looked through what I had specifically bought myself, it came to about three outfits. It's amazing.

Today I intend to get the bookshelves on the bookcase and the other stuff - books, toys, manuals, nail clippers, etc - arranged. Then we'll see what it looks like. The nursery at our old house was a little bigger and airier, but then it was kind of deathly still for so many months. This one so far feels a bit crowded (but that may be the continued presence of boxes &c.) but it's still got a kind of sense that there have been children there.

One thing that bothers me and I want to change is that the family before us put a knob with a lock lock on the closet door - facing out, so you could lock your child into the closet. The fact that the inside of the door has kicked-in dent marks in it supports the thesis that this actually happened. I hate that; I can't believe someone went out and got a knob with a lock on it and installed it just to lock their kid in a closet - fuckers. That knob has to go. That is not how things work in our house, and this is our house now.

Shandra