Nesting

While pregnant with Little Boy, I can't say that I nested in a traditional way. We moved to Richmond four months prior to his birth, and I found myself mostly absorbed with unpacking, cleaning, shopping, meeting new people, and such. I spent a great deal of time on the nursery, but everything I did felt necessary as a result of our recent move, so I never truly felt like I was nesting. Little Boy then arrived two weeks early, so I never even partook in the last minute nesting that manifests itself in frantically vacuuming and dusting an hour before going in to labor!

Again, this pregnancy has been different in so many ways, and I've definitely caught myself nesting in ways that are common but still surprise me, mainly because I find myself doing tasks that absolutely don't need done at that specific moment but that feel so necessary and urgent to me. I've found myself nesting in three different ways:

(1) Photo Organization: Lately I've been in an absolute panic every single time I open iPhoto. I spend hours looking through, deleting, labeling, and organizing photos that I've taken over the last two years. With another baby due in about 10 weeks, I've become fully aware that I have only developed about four pictures of Little Boy but have hundreds and hundreds of unorganized photos of him in my iPhoto folders. I've made huge strides in the last two months with my photo organization and feel like I might actually have first and second year albums finished of Little Boy before Baby Boy arrives!

(2) Home Organization: Closets, the attic, the buffet cabinet, the laundry room - you name it, and I've been cleaning it out and organizing it lately, usually when I should be resting, shopping, cooking dinner, or paying bills. I actually sent Hubby to Lowes on Christmas Eve to buy shelves for the laundry room. When he returned, I asked him to hang them immediately, and I then proceeded to clean and organize the whole laundry room. That room looks great now, but seriously! One, we should have hung those shelves the week after we moved in and not on Christmas Eve two years later, and two, I should have been cleaning the house and making beds for my mom and sister's imminent arrival, not stacking paint paint cans and cleaning supplies on shelves in the laundry room. Talk about inappropriate timing (a trait that I'm finding is synonymous with nesting)!

(3) Home Decor: We've lived in this house for over two years now, and I find myself looking at it through new eyes. Broken blinds, crooked shades, nicks in the paint, lack of family photos on the wall...it's all driving me mad! I realize that decorating a home takes time and is usually completed over the course of several years, especially at our young age when we're still accumulating decor. But nowadays I am seriously fighting the urge to decorate everything at once and all before the baby is born! I want to hang pictures, repaint rooms, sew curtains, clean carpets, change light fixtures, replace old windows, buy new dining room furniture, and more! I hope that some of that is done before Baby Boy's arrival, but I need to pace myself as well and realize that Rome was not built in a day (or the K house will not be decorated in a day). Big ticket items especially (ahem, new windows and dining room furniture) will not be making an appearance any time in the near future!

I feel as though I'm going crazy, and you can help me feel more sane by sharing the ways you nested (or are nesting) while waiting for baby to arrive!