This is mine

I just spent 15 minutes nursing Liv on my left, and using my right arm to tickle Ada's back as she fell asleep. It was one of those moments where I looked down and saw a pair of tiny feet perched on a little back and framed by two toddler hands and thought, "This is my life?! This is my life. This is my life."

It's always a blur of disbelief and gratitude.

Ada and I spent time this afternoon watching her monthly videos. I spent time wiping tears, especially while watching the month before we left for Italy and seeing images of our first month there. It was another flash of, "This is my life?"

The past 2 years have been incredible in about a million ways.

So has the past month.

I've been continually impressed with how different a second child is. Maybe it's that I worry less, or have less time, or have less attention, or this baby is just requires different stuff of me, but I feel like I've only spent a fraction of the time tracing her profile and watching her sleep faces that I did with Ada. It's not that I love her any less, or find her any less incredible, but the newness of loving a being I created is not as new anymore. Not that it's old hat either. It just is. After I had Ada I remember feeling my heart change. And maybe it just needed one initiation into becoming a mother-heart; just one maturation before it was ready for children-plural, and not just child-one. Maybe it doesn't need to shed something else or grow another size to fit another tiny human inside. Maybe what I'm trying to say is that number two just feels more natural.

That's the craziest thing to me: I'm a mother of two. An exceptionally young mother of two. But I'm doing it. And I think I'm doing a pretty fine job.

Bright and shiny happy formulas

I painted yesterday. Both girls were sleeping, Ada in her bed and Liv in her bassinet within arms reach. It was another "I got this" sort of afternoon. Until it wasn't, because those bright and shiny moments are fleeting—though somehow they sustain you through the longer darker ones.

Que fussing baby (what happened to my ever-so-placid babe?!) and a toddler who was so content gluing paper flowers on construction paper and talking about friends she's met once or probably won't ever see again that it sent her already guilt-prone mother into a guilt spiral. I felt guilty for not trying harder to expand her circle of friends here. I felt bad for missing out on opportunities she would have loved because they seemed too hard for me. I felt bad for Liv who is the current back-burner child that gets nursed on demand, but that's about it. And I felt lonely for the first time in a long while. And all of the sudden everything felt hard. Hard to get dinner on. Hard to pick up. Hard to get kids to bed. Hard to even think about facing another night that might be sleepless and difficult. (It was only a few nights before where all four of us were on the couch around 3 AM. Three of us were crying. I'll let you guess who the one holding it together was.)

But I guess this is what it takes to recognize the bright and shiny moments.

My best friend as told me about "happy formulas." Everyone's is different, but it's important to know yours and make it happen the best you can. I think all of us at our house are just reformulating right now. And I'm not worried. Things will work themselves out and everything will feel (relatively) smooth again. I'm beginning to understand what I need to be happy (and make everyone around me happy). Here's what I've got so far: I know it is at least one-part Haagan-Dazs Salted Caramel Truffle ice cream. See? On the right track already, right?

Easy does it

I want to say Ciao! to everyone. Maybe I still can, something about "Thanks. See you later!" doesn't slide off my tongue the way it used to, but I feel weird saying ciao to people in Utah. I know, I know, I've only been gone 9 months.

I've been surprised at how at once comfortable a little clunky re-adjusting to home is.

I gave Ada a bath in a real bathtub yesterday. Coming from the shallow, tiny kitchen sink she's been bathing in, the bathtub was a large, looming, intimidating space. It echoes. It's deep. The sound of the water splashing into the basin is noisy. The water came up more than just a few inches.

I had to get in with her and assure her it was all okay. When I laid my head in the water she started to cry. I guess we'll ease into bathing in tubs.

In the grocery store I held my produce all bagged up in the plastic produce baggies and wandered for a few seconds looking for the scale to weigh it and get the little price sticker (in Italy, the checkers don't weight your fruit and enter the produce code, you do at a little electronic machine in the produce section).

For the most part, however, things have been beautiful, and sunny, and full of fresh smelling Utah air. Ada is adjusting, we're loving spending so much time with family, and for the first time since last September, we each have our own cell phone.

Life has never felt so luxe.

Home is wherever I'm with you

I've become fairly convinced that international flights shave a few days off your life. You wake up early in one place, and 30 hours later you're half way around the world. It's a miracle, really. But when you walk to the baggage claim at your final destination, it feels like you just put your body through a tumble cycle and ate junk food for 30 days.

Ada was great. I can't complain, except for the fat lip she gave me on our first flight. I swiped Jordan Ferney's idea and wrapped some dollar store toys in crepe paper to serve as calculated distractions. Worked like a charm. When Ada would start getting fussy (i.e. the boredom that preceded the overtired tears) I'd grab a brightly packaged present out of my bag. The newness is all she needed. Something besides the same faces, the same aisles, the same snacks and the same two seats that the three of us packed ourselves into for hours on end.

After a short trip over the Alps we spent 4 hours in the coolest airport on the planet (how many airports have baby care lounges?) before boarding our flight to Chicago. As soon as every one was buckled in (and I was rejoicing at the empty seat to my right—what luck!) they announced that the plane we were on had some issues and we were going to get off, wait for a new one, and board again in two hours. As soon as the microphone when dead, flight attendants handing cups of ice cream flooded the aisles. Well played, KLM.

As I ate my ice cream (and the cup they gave to Ada) all I could think was: Two hours. As just under the amount of time we have between landing in Chicago and boarding for Salt Lake. Two hours. As in, we were going to miss our connection.

My only consolation was the empty seat.

When we reboarded, two extremely happy travelers filled the empty seats. They would have missed their flight. (At least someone's prayer was answered). My heart sunk a little. But ever-optimistic Michael kept assuring me, "We'll make it!"

When we landed in Chicago we got another announcement: the gate wasn't free so we had to wait for a plane to move before disembarking.

That is when I lost all hope of getting home in time to meet my family at Cafe Rio and reunite over pork salads and salsa.

We arrived in Salt Lake just before 9 pm. As I looked out at the Rockies—the mountains that mean home; that are jagged and rough but act like big, welcoming arms— I could hardly believe that at 3:30 that same morning (though nearly 30 hours prior) I was walking out of my shoebox apartment on Via Solferino, climbing in a dark taxi, and trying to convince Ada that it wasn't time for jabber, but time for more sleep. We waved good by to our city from the air.

This morning I woke up in my parent's old bedroom. Everything is so familiar it almost feels like the past year never happened. It's a strange paradox that I think we experience every time we make a major shift in life: that it seems at once far distant and very close.

Never so free

I got married on a Thursday. On Sunday, my four-days-a-married-women self flew across the country with my four-days-a-married-man husband and settled into a one room basement apartment filled with borrowed furniture. When we walked in for the first time, in my head I kept repeating, "It's just for the summer. It's just for the summer. It's just for the summer. . ." so I could hold it together.

We ate off paper plates while my brand new dishes sat in boxes back in Utah. When I pictured cooking my first meal as a married woman, I hadn't really envisioned it consisting of freezer burritos, a bag salad, and orange slices. I lost my job before my first day just weeks before we flew out, so I spent all of my time writing thank you notes for wedding gifts I'd never seen, looking for jobs, listening to NPR and visiting a museum here and there.

Some of those first few days there are among the loneliest ones of my life.


I saw my husband less than I ever had before. I didn't have family close. I had no friends. For the first several weeks I was isolated and alone most of the day. I thought it would be so different from what it was. I was newly married. I expected the whole summer to be bursting with newly wed bliss and a sense of companionship that I had never before understood. And yes, there was some of that (on the weekends). But there were also very hard, very lonely days spent wondering why this thing that felt 100% right was so 100% hard right now. People had told me to wait to get married until Mikey had gotten back from his internship. "And miss out on the adventure?!" I'd say, "No way!"


I'm not writing this for a pity party.

Truth is, nothing could have been better for my marriage. As soon as we got back home we were pulled in a thousand different directions by family, friends, events, deadlines, school work, callings, co-workers, younameits. Were it not for a summer of having my husband as my only person (even if I didn't have him to myself as much as I wanted), I don't think my marriage would be as strong as it is right now. I also don't think we would have been prepared to do what we're doing right now.

I have expected to feel the same pangs of loneliness here. So far, the flickers of isolation have been fleeting and few. It has been a welcome reassurance. I think that nothing could have brought me closer to my baby, closer to my husband and closer to my Heavenly Father like this past month-and-a-half have. I don't feel cloistered. I feel so free.

Free to dance in the kitchen while we're making pancakes together. Free to play "pillow-bomber" with Ada before bed. Free to write. Free to paint. Free to make my life what I want to make it. That's the best part. I'm someplace so new that it feels like a fresh canvas. I can't say what I want to say when I meet someone at the grocery store. I can't remember street names or how to get the address I just looked up. So I gesture and wander, and in doing so, realize this wide-eyed newness is what makes me grateful to be here every single day.

What to wear to a cocktail party

When we arrived, the Italian professor from the University of Bologna who had just lectured at Johns Hopkins insisted that Ada get a name tag. We wrote: "Ada Anderson - United States - Guest." And she wore it, and ate it, and spilled on it. It garnered quite a few smiles and laughs. She is a fantastic ice-breaker.

Mikey and I attended our very first cocktail party last night. Consequently, Ada did too. Because that's the kind of classy parents we are. Unfortunately, Ada didn't anticipate needing her little black dress in Bologna, so she wore pink polka-dot stretch pants instead. I don't think anybody noticed she was under-dressed.

The party was a classy affair at the Bologna Center Director's beautiful penthouse suite in the heart of downtown. The view off his balcony is spectacular. You can see the towers that dot the city; the famous Due Torri are just a few steps up the street. His home is filled with amazing treasures picked up, no doubt, from years of travel. I want a home filled with treasures some day too.

I was grateful my father-in-law taught me what a teetotaler is, the summer we lived in DC. I used the term at the party and felt quite fancy while pouring myself a sparkling water instead.

By a quarter-to-nine Ada was getting tired. As we said our goodbyes to a few students, Mikey mentioned that she had had one to many drinks and we were going to call it a night. One student replied, "Yeah, I saw her trying to walk over there. She did look a bit tipsy."

Living in Italy: Laundry

One of the things I'm learning quickly is that doing things I would do a few times a week back in Utah is a daily must-do here. Take the floors for example. I rarely see carpet here. (They have some in the church, but it might as well be tile it's so dense and hard). I never knew how much dust and specks of dirt that carpet hides, and now that I know I just might vacuum more when we have it again. Our tiled floors don't hide a thing. So I sweep every day. Sometimes twice a day. (Otherwise Ada looks like a dirty dust bunny by the end of the day).

Laundry is another nearly daily task. Dryers are also a rarity in Bologna (Italy? Europe?). Everything gets hung dry either on the line in the back yard or on one of two drying racks (that Ada uses as her personal hideout when unfolded and laden with clothes).

The washing machines are almost always in the kitchen (they're hooked up to the plumbing that the sink is hooked into so when the washer drains, the sink gurgles a bit) in the apartments I've seen. The machines are small and only hold 5 - 7 kg. This is another reason why doing laundry (almost) daily is easier.

It's teaching me think ahead and plan more. There's no "Oh shoot, we're out of undies, I'll quickly toss a load in and switch it to the dryer before I go to sleep." Things take 12 - 24+ hours to dry here! You would have soggy undies and probably a rash the next day.

This does make cloth diapering a bit more intense. I have to do a load every other day because the liners take a day and a half to dry (unless I get them out quickly in the morning and catch the little patch of sun in our yard for a few hours. Then it's usually the standard 12ish).

But doing a load a day (and sweeping the floor once a day) makes the chores seem small. There's no saving up wash for a big laundry day that takes over a whole afternoon. There's no big-time Saturday cleaning the floors either. These things happen incrementally each day and I'm learning that putting in small, consistent efforts pays off in the long run.

Balsamo

I have become even more aware that Spanish ≠ Italian lately. Sometimes I think Mikey tries to convince me (not on purpose) that it's closer than it really is. And I always believe him because he's the smartest boy I know.

On our second full day in Bologna we went grocery shopping. We needed shampoo among other things, but I was desperate to wash the hotel shampoo out of my hair (Mikey: You washed your hair this morning at the hotel. Why are you so anxious to get shampoo? Me: It's precisely because I washed my hair at the hotel this morning, with hotel shampoo, that I'm anxious to get shampoo.)

We were at a small market within the city walls, a few minutes walk from our place. It has a limited selection, but all the essentials. Mikey grabbed a bottle of balsamo off the shelf.

"Here you go," He told me, "Balsamo must mean shampoo." I thought it my head, He must be right. He does know Spanish after all.

The next morning I showered and washed my hair. When I squirted the balsamo into my hand I thought "How creamy. . ." but thought maybe it was some sort of two-in-one deal because we couldn't find any bottles that said anything besides balsamo on them.

I used it every time I showered for a week. My hair was heavy, and strangely greasy. New climate, I supposed.

I told Mike how gross my hair felt and he confessed that he too had been bothered by our "shampoo." He told me he had been using a bar of soap (um, yuck) to wash his hair because his didn't have enough "body" with my "girl shampoo" (psh . . .).

So I Google it.

balsamo = conditioner.

Hello silky soft hair. After "washing" my hair with conditioner for a week, when I finally got real shampoo and washed it yesterday, it was the softest my hair has been since I was pregnant.

Maybe I'll be a grease ball once a month to maintain my silky-smoothness?

Our Bolognese Weekend

Here are some highlights:

23.9.11

Ada and I went to the Biblioteca Salaborsa (the beautiful public library in Bologna that sits just off the Piazza Maggiore and on top of some ancient city ruins of Bononia). We go here about every other day. On Friday it was empty, a rarity. This meant Ada had full reign of the place and boy did she take advantage of it.

Later, Ada explored in the back yard with Dad while I made dinner. She ate lots of dirt at leaves. Her favorite. We ate leftover Chicken Tikka Masala (I had to search high and low for ginger, and even still it wasn't a great batch. Maybe we should stick to a more Mediterranean menu. . .)

After dinner we headed to the park (just a few minutes from our place, off Castiglione). Ada coughed up a leaf she had eaten earlier in the back yard. Nice work, Dad.

We took a detour on the way home and stopped by our  favorite gelateria (La Sorbettaria). Ada scored a free wafer by being extra cute and wearing shoes with cat faces on them. She was an extremely happy baby. And even happier when we shared the real goodness (oh chocolate gelato, why must you be so tasty?)

9.24.11

We made a pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of the Madonna di San Luca. We rode our bikes (about 5 - 10 minutes from our front door) to the base of the portico that leads all the way to the basilica (another 3.5 km that takes way longer than 5 - 10 minutes to walk). It's one of the longest porticoes in the world (666 arches. Yes, on purpose).

Panorama features are fun, but so hard to get straight. This was my best attempt.

On the way back down. Down, down, down, down (did we walk all the way up?) down, down.

Here's a view from half way up the Porto San Luca. Bologna is incredible. Seriously incredible.

We came home, wrestled Ada for hours trying to get her to sleep or eat, or do something besides whine (please can we get into a groove soon???) and soon after we put her to bed, my dream-come-true next door neighbor (go to about minute 2:29), Clementina brought over a cake for Ada. I guess when we poked our heads in to say hi earlier she told her she would (I truly wish I understood more Italian).

Well done, Ada. Very well done.

Oh Darling, let's be adventurers

When I walk out my front door and look to my left I see this:

Sometimes I can't believe I live here. I'm anxious to get out for the afternoon and take some photos so I have a bunch to paint from. Problem is, I'm always to wussy to take my camera with me for fear of looking like a geeking-out tourist. Hmmm. Probably my English would give me away before my camera would. It needs to happen though. Soon.

We were at the post office yesterday waiting for them to call C20, our number, so we could go and get our permesso di soggiorno.  While we were waiting, a cute mom, her sister and her baby boy Marco sat next to us to wait for their number to be called (an A number. All of the Italians had A numbers to see someone at a different window about something else. The A numbers went quick. I wanted to be an A number after we were there for over an hour before our C number got called).

She asked me how old Ada is, a question I'm really good at answering now.

Sette mese. E tuo figlio?

Nove mese.

Come si chiama?

Marco. Lei come si chiama?

Ada.

Eh?

Ah-dah.

Ahh! Ada.

Si. Ada.

I've just resigned to introducing her as Ada here (pronounced Ah-dah, rather than Aid-da). It's just easier. Otherwise people give me a look and then I spell it and they say Ah-dah anyway.

(Tangentially, my name is even harder. Church was so funny. Come si chiama? Paige. Apegia. No, Pay-juh. Ah, Paygey. Sure. Mike's converts from Chile call me Peggy. Maybe it should be my international name).

With most babies Ada has met, she's been the over-eager friend type. Really into what they're interested in, inquisitive to a fault, maybe a little grabby. Excitable. Squeally. They're not really sure what to do with her.

But when Ada met Marco. . . Oh, Marco. He was different. With Marco, a young Italian bimbo with great, long hair, and brown eyes framed with enviable eyelashes, Ada was perhaps a bit smitten. He smiled, she played coy. He made a little chirp, she stayed quiet. Reserved. Very unlike her usual I WANT TO TOUCH YOUR FACE AND GRAB YOUR SHIRT WHILE I MAKE THESE LITTLE EXCITED NOISES (that sound sort of like squeaky brakes . . .) It was darling.

And the sister? She made me miss mine.

On a related note: We're officially residenti di Bologna!!!

Month 1

I know. MORE BABY PICTURES! I get it. Who doesn't like looking at cute babies? I've been trying to find the minutes to put this little video together (yet another project that Mike says, "is on an unsustainable path...") I'm surprised it took me so long. But here it is. For your viewing pleasure. Over a month late.

Month 1 from Paige Anderson on Vimeo.

You're not like a Chia Pet...or a Tomayatchi

Mike talking to Ada: I just had no idea how much fun we'd have with you this early on. You're not just a thing we have to take care of like a Chia Pet or a...what are those things called? A Tomayatchi?

Me: Tomagotchi?

Sometimes I'm on another planet

I defended my thesis on Tuesday. Thursday I attended a lecture and went to mt Stats class (I curse my freshman-year-self nearly every day for not finishing these two 100-level generals with the rest of the freshman at BYU. It always seemed easier to take them Later. Now that Later is here I'm thinking Earlier may have actually been the better choice. But I digress...)

When I'm on campus it feels as if I never left (for a week) to, you know, HAVE A BABY. People ask me how motherhood is and it feels so disconnected from where I am at that moment: school. My school-self and my mother-self aren't acquaintances. I feel like they're parts of two lives. Last semester--with all its art and craziness--seems like a lifetime ago. But a lifetime I revisit now and again when I actually go to class. Weird.

Thinking about motherhood as I walk around Cougar Campus, it feels like a foreign place. But on the same token, when I think that I'm technically still a student and that I have a midterm in a few weeks, school seems just as far away.

Why can't I reconcile the two parts into one me? Maybe it's because of the newness of everyday that I still don't feel like I'm living in my own skin. This child is mine? This child is mine. This child is mine! And I can't get enough of her. Because I'm her mama. She knows my face and my voice and when she's fussy people hand her to me, rather than some other mother-figure in the room. Because I'm the mama. I'm her mama. I make her feel calm and safe and quiet. And I can't get over it.

I was asked to write up a paragraph of the greatest accomplishments of my undergraduate career. I still haven't finished it. In fact, my cursor is blinking after the first sentence of my brainstorming document: I gave birth to a perfectly beautiful baby girl. (insert blinking cursor here).

It just hit me again. Holy crap.

Rice Cereal

There's a famous piece of family folklore that involves my grandmother feeding my father rice cereal at something like 6 days old. Apparently if you stuff them full enough, they sleep through the night?

Last night I had a dream that my dad was forcing rice cereal down my baby's throat. And he wasn't even using a baby spoon which almost made me more mad than the fact that she's 2 1/2 weeks old and can't even digest solids. As I was getting on my dad's case about it, my grandma enters, ignores me, and starts praising my dad on what a good grandfather he is.

I woke up angry to a hungry baby and I did not feed her rice cereal.

Discovering Daddy

One of the best things about motherhood so far is watching Mikey take on his role as a father. I love listening to him sing songs in Spanish, or the diaper change song (which he rewrote the lyrics to), or just about any other song he can fit her name into. I love watching him change her diapers or get excited about her strong neck. I love watching my girl discover her daddy. I think she loves his voice as much as I do.

Last night 9:00 rolled around and both Mikey and I were pretty beat. I fed the babe, changed her diap, swaddled her tight and then tried to muster the energy to stand up and sing her to sleep. That's where Mikey stepped in. He rocked and sang while I listened. I tried to close my eyes, but I couldn't stop watching the man I love most care for our baby girl. How I love them both. . .

Another Mormon Mommy Blog

I've tried several times over the last week or so to post something, anything, that doesn't have to do with my little one. But try as I might to have a thought outside of the realm of mothering and how enamored I am with her, I can't. I've been consumed. And it's not that I don't want to be consumed by this newness in my life--I like what I've become--but I don't want this to become another Mormon Mommy Blog (and I'm willing to bet that Mikey doesn't want this to become one either because while he is a Mormon, he's not a Mommy).

I'm afraid, however, that my little one will be the subject of most posts for the next little while. Too bad. Motherhood is something you're thrust into all at once, and it takes a little while for the shock of it all to wear off (if it ever does . . .) I thought that I felt motherly when I heard her heartbeat for the first time, or when I watched her move across the ultrasound screen, or when I cooked and cleaned and prepared for her arrival (again, and again, and again . . .) but what I feel now is something completely different.

I was crying last night because I felt so unproductive. Write 8 thank you notes. That was one of two things on my to-do list. And I didn't write one. In fact, I had a hard time finishing the only other task on my list. When Mikey comes home and asks about my day and I feel like it's the same report day in and day out, "I spent 30 minutes trying to wake the baby to feed her. I spent a good 45 feeding her/keeping her awake to eat.  Then I put her down, and then started the whole process over again an hour or so later." (I'm slowly relearning how to view 45 minutes as a large chunk of time). But although there are definite moments of monotony, it is truly a joyful job.

Because as I'm sitting her writing this, there's a sleeping infant on my lap who just smiled the biggest one I've seen yet. And she's mine!

Gold Medalist

You know your life has changed when the most exciting part of your day was finding a poop in your baby's diaper. And you know that you're never going back when you applaud your infant for nearly unloading on your husband's hand and then applauding and congratulating her like she had won an Olympic gold medal.

I love it.

The first few days have definitely provided both Mike and I with several curve balls. I thanked him for helping so much last night and he responded with "What? I nearly fed our baby a slushie!" We're still learning. I can't get over what classic first-time parents we are who worry about things like her mouth breathing and count soiled diapers obsessively (and cheer on our baby's bowel movements).

It's still sinking in that she's mine. Forever. Oh how I love her so, so and so!

What did I expect?

I had a lot of dreams about what the pregnancy journey would be like. I imagined sharing our news with family in some fun--possibly elaborate--way. Heck, I thought I'd surprise Mike with the news in an exciting fashion. I expected to drive around the city picking up various kinds of mashed potatoes (or some other random food) trying to satisfy an intense craving. I envisioned myself waking Mike up in the middle of the night saying, "I think this is it!" and rushing to the hospital, getting there just in time, and delivering a beautiful baby girl.

But it wasn't like that at all. The news leaked before we got a chance to share. Mike was the one who held the flashing pregnancy test until it read PREGNANT and actually gave me the news. Cravings? What cravings? I had one. And rather than getting to drive to the hospital because of waves of contractions, we waited for the doctors to call us saying they were ready to induce.

But what I didn't expect was how instantly I would fall in love with my baby girl; how instantly I would feel like a mother; how instantly I would feel peace and contentment in just holding her close. It has been a truly incredible day.

Control-freak

I feel like I'm already learning lessons about being a parent.

Like this one: you have absolutely no control. None. Not even a little.

Nesting

Call it what you will, but I don't think Mikey will want to move while his wife is pregnant ever again. But the end of move in day, I had every box unpacked but the boxes of books (and those were only still in boxes because we hadn't yet bought a bookshelf--which is another story. . .) It's fun to make a new space.

The night before we moved in we met our landlord to get the keys; make sure everything was clean and ready for us to move in the next day. The carpets were wet and smelled like cleaner and our landlord was just touching up a few former nail holes on the wall he had recently patched over. He gave us the keys and we left him to finish up.

When we got in the car Mikey knew I was not happy. It looked so small! How could we ever fit our lives and our new baby in there? The bedroom wasn't what I had remembered and now my dreams of having even a nursery corner were over. (Mind you, I had been kept up for days thinking about how we would arrange the furniture so we could fit the crib, dressers, bed . . .)

We came back later that night after he had left. I sobbed. Seriously? Yes seriously. And it's embarrassing now that things are moved in and I honestly love where we live. But I noticed things that set me off: no garbage disposal? No counter space in the bathroom? No place for a crib? I sat down on the only seat in the empty place--the toilet--and cried and cried. I went to reach for some T.P. to wipe my eyes with and when I saw where the dispenser was located and how I nearly fell off the john when I reached for it, things got ugly.

We left shortly thereafter. But moved in the next morning. And what do you know?! Sleep actually makes people rational, and happy, and able to deal with a toilet paper dispenser on the wall rather than right next to the pot.

My poor husband. I think he's anxious for this baby to come so a sense of sanity will be restored to his wife. (But I maintain that I haven't been that bad. Honest.)

However, the "Nesting instinct" that kicks in was a force to be reckoned with in me. It was after ten (which is late at our house) and there I was nailing and drilling coat hooks into the wall. I couldn't stop. It was weird. And while I have always been someone who doesn't like to stop until things are done, this was different. While I sat at church I got this twitch because I wanted to come home and hang pictures on the walls and the painting over the couch.

I have reorganized the few baby outfits we have probably half a dozen times.

I'm crazy.