The past six weeks have been an absolute marathon of baby-arrival preparation. It started with the overwhelming task of turning our home office / library / quinn’s art studio / catch-all room into a nursery. This included two garage sales, several postings on craigslist, a LOT of rearranging of the rest of the house and shopping shopping shopping. I posted the process here. And if you like to read the end of the book first, here’s the final product:

The nesting instinct has been fierce this time around. There have been countless nights of waking at 5 a.m. unable to fall back to sleep. Instead of fighting with myself, I’d just get up and organize a drawer somewhere in the house. Then there was the night I woke up at 1:30 a.m., finally got out of bed at 2:30 and cleaned out and re-organized my linen cupboard, giving two big bags of sheets and towels to my next door neighbor who volunteers at a charity shop. I’m finally sleeping a bit better now. There’s still the five trips to the bathroom a night but at least I’m sleeping until 7 o’clock. Trust me, that’s an improvement.

Now that the house is pretty much in order, I’ve turned my attention to my online life. The other night I started uploading hordes of back-logged photos to Flickr. As my friend, Joan, says, I’m now “cyber-nesting” which I thought was a very apropos term! And finally includes posting here!

Between prepping the house and wrapping up at work — my maternity leave officially started yesterday — there has been no free time. Until now. The baby is due in two days and I’m actually ready which is a weird feeling. Quinn’s birth was a 3 week early surprise attack leaving us no prep or down time. We were so unprepared. And we fully expected this one to come early too. We were first hoping to make it through Thanksgiving, then until my mom’s arrival, then through the end of November. Now, here we are on December 4th, my mom has been here for a week and I honestly have no idea when this little girl will decide to make her debut.

I have to admit, though, that it feels good for us to finally have a little time to adjust to the idea of a new baby. Because we actually hadn’t really done so until recently. With launching a new company this year, having Quinn start Kindergarten and just the chaotic busy-ness of our lives, we never really had the opportunity to sink our teeth into the idea. Every now and then the reality would hit us and make us a shudder just a little. But now we’re actually getting excited which is a nice place to be. Quinn is probably the most excited of us all, but he has been since he first heard the news so he’s had plenty of time to get used to it. He’s determined to be a helper — right down to changing her diapers. Being the sensitive and empathetic child that he is, I’m sure he will be a good helper and a very nurturing big brother. I do worry a bit, though, about some backlash. He has been the center of attention in a pretty adult world for quite a while now. I don’t think he quite grasps how much his world is going to be rocked. But we’ll take that one day at a time.

So all our hospital bags are packed, digital camera batteries are charged, iPod playlists are set and now we wait.