Getting Organized
One of the conundrums of pregnancy is the intense need to Get Things Done about the time you hit your third trimester, which is also the time you are feeling heavy, bulky and completely useless in the lifting and hauling department.
I just bought a changing table online. Whoo-hoo! We never had one with Erik because we simply didn’t have the room, but my friend has one and I can see that it is oh so very nice to have a dedicated space with all the baby butt stuff. Where to put it? I think I’m going to be a bad mommy and put it in Erik’s room.
Normally I wouldn’t want to supplant my older child’s room with a bunch of baby stuff, but that room is really a loss. He sleeps in there. That’s it. There are some toys in there, but if he wants to play with them he brings them downstairs. There are tons of books in there, but we either read them at bedtime or he brings them downstairs. I can’t ever recall a single time in the history of the world that he’s voluntarily gone to his room to play. He’s too much of a social creature. The worst punishment in the world for him is to be left alone longer than 30 seconds.
Thus the changing table can go in his sleeping chambers. That will work during the day, at least. If the baby is a night time screamer we may have to just change her on the bed or something so we don’t wake Erik, but at least the changing table won’t cramp up a room that’s already crammed with junk.
I am also trying to figure out where we are going to put everything else. I think I’m going to have to do a serious closet clean out of my own clothes and let Mike put his wardrobe in our bedroom. He currently uses the spare bedroom closet, but I think we’ll have to put Elsa’s clothes in there. My friend introduced me to the idea of hanging all the clothes instead of putting them in drawers. Hallelujah! I’ve been doing that with Erik’s clothes since we moved in and I like it so much better. He actually wears more than just the five things that always land on the top of the drawer, plus things aren’t as wrinkled up and thrown around. It takes a bit longer to hang everything, but is well worth the time investment.
Anyway! Wasn’t that exciting?
We pulled down the rest of the Christmas stuff today so our living room feels a lot fresher and has more room. I love all the Christmas joy, but it’s a relief to go back to normal. Erik kept saying, “Christmas was such a good idea. Let’s do it every year.” Silly goose.
I am very excited to report that he is becoming a real, true helper. He took down almost all the ball ornaments and put them in their boxes then he carried all the small Christmas boxes down to the basement. I bought another toy organizer that required some assembly. Basically you just had to screw a bunch of rods onto a board. Very easy. I set up the screws and he did the majority of the screwing.
I knew that kids eventually became useful, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. Of course he required a lot of supervision and guidance, but it was still amazing to have him actually do a real job and do it right instead of just making more work for me to go back and do when he wasn’t looking.