A Name for a New Person

We have a name:



Spelled like (and named after) Clive Staples. This has been our boy name that we've sort of mulled around since before we even started having kids and it is really fun to be actually using it. Rob has always pushed for using Clive instead but I just don't know about that. I am less opposed to the name Clive now than I have been in past years (a decade ago it sounded to me like the name of a bully or maybe a cute dog, but now there's Clive Owen and a lot more quirky old-fashioned boy names going around) but I like Lewis better and we are going to stick with that. We are still a little undecided on middle names and are tossing around two family name possibilities, one from Rob's side and one from mine. There are mild problems with both, unfortunately; one of them rhymes with our last name and one of them, when combined with the first name, is a comedy duo from the 40s and 50s. We'll see; Violet's middle name was totally a last-minute decision and I love it so we'll just have to wait and see how things shake out.

Things around here have made some strides toward being ready for a new baby to come into the house, although not enough to keep me from having classic anxiety dreams (you know, where I have been enrolled in a class all year but haven't gone to it once and am now about to fail, or where I'm in a grocery store and can't find anything I need to buy). My subconscious wants me to TAKE CARE OF WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE ALREADY.

Have I already explained that we aren't decorating a nursery this time around? There are two main reasons.

1. Neither Grace nor Violet actually slept in their rooms until they were close to a year old. The nurseries ended up functioning as charmingly decorated storage rooms.
2. Our house has two bedrooms upstairs (currently an office and a guest room) and two in the basement (the master and the one that Grace and Violet share now). I don't really want to shuffle the furniture and put the girls upstairs until after Violet turns 3, for convenience and ease of nighttime parenting and whatnot. 

So our new little person is officially going to bunk in our room (just like our other babies have done unofficially) and hopefully he will not resent his lack of nursery when he learns about it. Thus, the rearranging we need to do is pretty minimal and I have gotten a start on it, despite what my subconscious thinks. I organized our master closet to make room for some storage drawers for baby clothes, added some under-bed storage boxes to our room, and made plans to get our changing table back in use as such. I think next weekend I am going to have Rob go up in the attic and get down all the baby stuff to clean and set up around the house-- the cosleeper that attaches to our bed , the bouncy seat, the car seat, and so forth. We will still be 5 weeks out from my due date then, which I admit is kind of early to have all that in the house. Or maybe it's not? I have lost all sense of perspective on this and I just need for it to be done.

I did get through a large pile of baby laundry recently. The little diapers are all clean and neatly arranged in their basket and I found all my slings and babywearing gear. And what else does a cliché of a hippie attachment parenting mama need, right? Clothes, I suppose. As you would probably guess, I did not have much in the way of boy or gender neutral clothes. That is, up until about a month ago. In the space of 2 weeks, I got hand-me-down baby clothes from 3 different friends, one of whom had twin boys, and now we are AWASH in baby boy clothes, swimming in a sea of blue outfits. I feel so grateful and overwhelmed with their generosity, and I am so happy to be giving these clothes another round of use instead of buying new ones (the Earth says "yay!"), and AAACK WHERE DO I STORE IT ALL?! Really, I think we are pretty well outfitted through the 12-month size and I have been surprised anew at just how many tiny outfits can fit in one load of laundry as I've sorted through my new stash.

Some sweet friends here in Salt Lake are throwing me a baby shower in a few weeks and I am really excited about it. There isn't a lot that we "need" for the new baby, between the gear we have already (thankfully we bought everything big/expensive in gender-neutral colors) and the hand-me-downs and our general minimalist approach to parenting and whatnot. There are some things that I put on a baby registry at Amazon, but there isn't a lot (and even less that I'll need at the very beginning) and it is really specific things (OK, I admit it-- I am picky about baby stuff) so we decided to go a different direction for the shower. They are doing a "fill the freezer" shower where instead of gifts everybody brings a meal or something for us to put in our freezer and pull out in those intense newborn weeks. I love this idea, especially given the logistics of our specific situation. And what I am really looking forward to is an afternoon of celebrating this new person coming into the world and being encouraged and supported by our community here.

That sounds especially lovely to me right now because I am a bit in the dumps. I am sleeping TERRIBLY and it is hot and oh, I feel so huge. It doesn't seem very real that we get to meet a tiny new person in just a few weeks; instead I just feel enormous and quasi-miserable. I don't really feel an end in sight at this point and my brain is having a hard time connecting all the low-level wretchedness with the end result of a BABY HOORAY. I am hoping that taking some more visible getting-ready steps will help, and I am working to cultivate an attitude of thankfulness about my healthy uncomplicated pregnancy. Six more weeks...