Biggest Confession Ever

I have not begun preparing for the new baby. Like, at all. There, I said it.


In fact, here is a (likely incomplete) list of things I have NOT done:


1. Sorted through even ONE SINGLE BOX of old Josie baby stuff. This includes, but is not limited to, clothes, receiving blankets, tiny hats, bottles, pump stuff, swings, bouncy seats, etc., etc. etc.


2. Started organizing all the rooms in the house to make space for the things we had gladly packed up. For example, I will likely have to clean out EVERY CUPBOARD in my kitchen in order to consolidate enough to make room for bottles and whatnot (And I plan on breastfeeding! Imagine how much room I would need if I was exclusively bottle-feeding! I shudder.)


3. Started the name battle with Jeremy. In fact, I didn't even make the initial list of names yet, because it is just SO MUCH EFFORT to discuss names with my husband. Every name I love, he hates. Every name he loves, I hate. I have no idea how we will ever match a name like Josephine Isabelle.


4. Come to the realization that there is a STRONG possibility we will be living in this house when the baby arrives (although we had plans to be gone), and therefore I need to make some MAJOR changes to our office to make it into a nursery, including finding a home for all of the crap that lives there and painting the walls a color that the landlord approves (because AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, I will NOT bring my child home to live in a Big-Bird-yellow room).


5. Decided what we will do with the sleeping arrangements after the first few months. My initial plan is this: Josie stays in her room, in her crib (unless she shows some sort of sign that she is ready for a big-girl bed BEFORE the baby comes, which I sincerely hope she DOES NOT), new baby in a bassinet or the Fisher-Price Deluxe Rock n' Play Lightweight Plush Sleeper from my wish list (squee! I still love buying baby things!). BUT, after a little while, we might need that baby out of our room. I'm not going to get into it all here, but I *may* have made some mistakes with Josephine, as far as sleeping goes, and so Baby X might be moving out of our room a little earlier that Josephine did ... in which case, I will need another crib (Yikes!) or Josie will need to move to her big-girl bed (she will use MY big-girl bed that my dad made for me); in that case we wouldn't have to buy another crib, but would have to buy another crib mattress anyway, so ... there's that. There are a lot of variables involved in that one.


6. Bought all the things that I wish I would have had last time or all the things we had last time that were awesome that didn't survive the first child.


7. Figured out what all the said items mentioned in #6 even ARE. I think maybe that can be the first thing I work on. Tomorrow or the next day, I'm going to cobble together a list of stuff I need to get for the baby. (I feel better already) (But I'm not going to do it right now. There's only so much I can do in one day, and confessing is today's task)


8. Decided if we are going to keep our craptastic video monitor and buy another camera to go with it (it can scan back and forth between the two) OR buy a nice new one that actually works (but will cost a lot more than just buying another camera for our existing monitor). 


9. Begun to think about DIAPERS. Oh lord. As many benefits as there are to cloth diapers, I am starting to get a little nervous. Josie's still in diapers, and there's always the possibility that she will be out of them by the time Baby X arrives, but I am not counting on it by any means. So, that means I have to plan on having to babies in cloth diapers, and I'm not going to lie to you -- pretty much every other day there is a situation where I am PRAYING the dryer gets done before Josephine soils the diaper she's wearing, because it is the LAST clean one in the house. 


And, of course, all the other little odds and ends that will eventually need to get done, like picking out a "coming home from the hospital" outfit, and making a fun bow to match, and finding a baby book so I can get new-baby footprints stamped in the front at the hospital, and blah, blah, blah. It would be easy to say "Oh, but I have so much TIME!" but not really, when I have done NOTHING. If I had started, at least I could say, "Well, we have clothes for the first month and a place for her to sleep, we'll make it!" We don't have that yet. Oopsie.


I'm not sure how I, a manic, cleaning, planning, type-A person, got here. But here I am. Some seasoned parent please tell me that I am normal or some non-parent please tell me to shut up because everything will be fine. Thanks!


At least it's not a boy and I don't have a shit-ton of clothes to buy, am I right? :)