Making Room

We jetted my belly across the equator and back in October, washed & sorted Stella’s 0-6 month clothes, and installed a new hot tub. Work ends in a week. I’ve given my well wishes to patients who will deliver while I am on leave. I have not forgotten that it took three months to learn how to get out of the house before noon with a newborn, yet I have the idea that I will be able to sew and write when Stella is in day care and I am home with our son. Thus we are cleaning out a closet. A closet that shouldn’t be a closet. It has a window, heating vent, phone jack and overhead light. We cleaned out this same closet before Stella’s birth and rapidly stuffed it with more junk. So we begin again. Mostly it involves me nagging my dear husband to recycle his 2002 Wired collection and 1991 box of Hustlers (after we take an amused look). I don’t remember 1991 being so 1980’s- but it WAS! What a horrific realization. At least it is my own and not my kids pointing it out in 15 years. Anyway, I have big plans for this closet/ reclaimed room. It will be my craft nook. No, My Craft Nook. It will have a small table under that sunny window upon which I will leave quarter-made quilts, pieces of collage, and tangled balls of yarn. And when I have 8 minutes to myself I can go in there and pick up a project (or a Hustler!).

I think it all means we’re ready. I think Stella is a ready as possible. She knows where her brother is for now (and will one day wish he had stayed there, I’m sure). She diapers and feeds and swaddles her dolls several times a day. We used her language to teach her about birth: I delivered her stuffed hippo from under my shirt/ between my legs and made a lot of pooping noises. Of course it has become a favorite activity- with or without the hippo. We want her there when the little one is born. For the labor- probably not. She is a worrier- and a toddler- so one of our generous friends will entertain her and bring her home for the final moments.

Now we dive into holiday entertaining and being entertained. And we wait.