I'm here feathering my nest

I guess I have hit the home stretch. Everything is moving right along.

I asked Chuckles if he would like a brother or a sister.

Me: Would you like a brother or a sister?
Chuckles: Which one is the boy?
Me: Brothers are boys, and sisters are girls.
Him: I want a boy sister.
Me: OK, good luck with that.

Chuckles has also recently taken to singing something that sounds vaguely like the Barney song.
I love you.
Hugs and kisses for you and me.
You love me.
I want hugs and kisses too.
And you are the best and I'm so good too and here are my cars, I love you, kiss me.
And so on.

I have started cleaning things. And vacuuming. Which if you know me, is quite amazing. Truly amazing. I don't vacuum. My motto should be, "I'm cool with windows but I don't do floors." It's a really good thing we have hardwood floors because you really don't need to do much with those. I also mopped some floors. And I scheduled the carpet cleaner guys for the day after Election Day.

And because I figured this flurry of cleaning was probably nesting (which I never did with Chuckles), I bought a rocking chair, cleaned curtains, rearranged all the furniture in Chuckles's room, arranged the furniture in the guest room/baby's room, decorated (mostly) the baby's room, purchased various and sundry baby items I needed in the house (infant acetaminophen, diaper ointment, petroleum jelly in squeeze tubes, etc), cleaned some more, organized the front hall closet, threw away a ton of shoes that were ripped and had holes, filed papers, and much much more. And that was Monday. Last night, I laid awake from 4 am on thinking about all the cleaning, painting, and organizing I could get done in the next three weeks. It's a sickness.

Somewhere in here, I morphed from a woman who was convinced that she would not to conceive, to one who did, to someone who thought for sure she would miscarry due to low progesterone or the bleeding, to one who stayed pregnant, to one who thought she'd start bleeding and have a premature infant thanks to the previa, to one who is pretty much beyond preemie-land, to someone who decorates nurseries sure in the knowledge that a baby is coming home. It's weird. I feel like everything I do for the new baby is like a jinx on me, but I so want to be ready because I really don't need to be at Target buying baby essentials at 4 days post-partum. I have a crib and diapers and ointments and unguents and a baby tub and clothes and every day I feel like an impostor. It's so weird. And I'm huge, so I'm really not impostering.

Small gripe: the other day I came home from work at 5:30 and discovered my husband on the couch watching TV and my son on the other couch reading books. I ran in and started heating the leftovers that were for dinner (lamb chops! whole grain pasta with homemade pesto! vegetables!). During this, my son wanted to be attached to me bodily. And my husband quips that for the 40 minutes he was home, Chuckles left him alone to watch TV. Now, I have three or ten things wrong with this scenario. 1 - You've been home for 40 minutes and haven't started dinner. 2 - You've been home for 40 minutes and haven't thrown in laundry, picked up anything, loaded or unloaded the dishwasher. 3 - You have been home for 40 minutes and did not spend it interacting with your child who has been at child care all day long. 4 - You are home right now not doing anything productive as far as I can tell and you are not helping fix dinner or entertaining the child so I can do it freely. Please give me a break. I think the heavy sigh I passive aggressively let out showed my displeasure, and then I left him the ingredients on the counter for what I wanted for dinner the next night (because I think actually figuring out what to fix is the hardest part for him).

Sometimes, Chuckles comes up to me. He's about this tall (see my hand right here). Then he proceeds to yell at my stomach something like, "HI BABY. Baby-Baby-Baby." It's supercute. I should get it on video.

Do you think I should start refering to the Baby by name when I talk about it in my home or am I good to refer to Baby as "baby"?

Global Financial Collapse makes me want to buy a new car. With 0% financing and no money down. I want the Honda Accord Cross-over but it doesn't come out until Model Year 2010. Nissan has a year's worth of Pathfinder inventories on the lot, so I could try that. They're probably buy one-get one.