On Nesting

Several months ago, Ray and I were in Tampa for a wedding and we had dinner with our friends, Austin and Katrina.  They brought their baby girl, Zoey, with them to dinner, and we talked about pregnancy and children.  As we were standing to say good-bye, Katrina said, "By the way, nesting is real!"  While I had no doubt she was right, I think I underestimated what it would be like in our house.

The nesting urge comes and goes with me.  There are days when I'm totally calm about everything, but there are days and moments, too, when I completely freak out.  This nesting instinct has lead me to:

• Have a meltdown over not having a nursery furniture plan
• Have a mild panic attack over how filthy our house was
• Spend an hour on my hands and knees vacuuming under all of our furniture
• Consider making our beloved Ninja an outside dog (only for about 30 seconds, though)
• Insist that we put the crib together tonight
• Wash every stitch of clothing we have for Wolverina (including all towels, blankets, and washcloths) in one afternoon marathon
• Subsequently fold and organize all clothing by size and type and store in different bins in her dresser drawer
• Spend countless hours pouring over our list of must-haves before the baby arrives and searching online to find the lowest possible price for each of these items
• Double-up on all supper recipes so that we can eat one dish for supper and Food-Saver the extras to ensure we have a freezer full of meals when Wolverina arrives (I've been able to freeze about 12 nights' suppers in just three cooking sessions in the evenings after work!)

Ray has been rather patient with me through all of this.  He has helped when he could and stayed out of my way when he couldn't.  But, I had an epiphany on Sunday about him.  While I was washing my fifth load of baby clothes, drying the fourth, and folding the third, I decided to take a quick break.  I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water, and Ray was in there polishing the sink with some sort of rubbing compound.  He'd decided Sunday morning that we "needed" to replace the kitchen faucet, so we went to Home Depot and picked out a reasonable replacement.  We came home, and he immediately began replacing the faucet.  But when he finished the installation, he decided that the sink needed to be polished.  So for the next hour, he used a nice variety of cleaning products and polishers trying to get our sink spotless.  I admit, it looks awesome.  But this got me thinking.

I recognized on his face the same expression I think I must have when I become obsessed with doing something right-this-very-second-because-if-we-don't-do-it-now-it'll-never-happen-and-it-has-to-be-done-before-the-baby-comes. Rather than point this out to him, I just gave him a hug and thanked him for his hard work.  I realized, too, that his work on the dresser, his installation of new lighting and fans, and even his organizing of the filing cabinet are all his version of nesting.  He clearly has a list in his head of things we have to do (or things he has to do) before Wolverina arrives, and he's working diligently to get them done.  Perhaps he handles the emotional aspect of it all better than I.  Perhaps he doesn't even realize what he's doing and just thinks it's another project he's working on.  But he's totally nesting just like I am.  And this makes me love him that much more.