by Sarah Jividen | Dec 22, 2017 | Mom Tips & Tricks, Pregnancy, The-Motherhood
I am 5 weeks away from having our baby boy! Woo hoo! Unfortunately though, that doesn’t leave me with a ton of time to finish up my final nesting goals. So I have some work to do!
Several weeks ago I was in full blown nesting mode and I wrote a blog about it. Wow, was that a great feeling at the time! By if I’m being honest, I’m starting to lose steam. I’m getting a lot more tired and bigger all around, both of which make it harder to tackle my nesting goals.
I can’t wait to have another set of super tiny feet in our home again.
It also hasn’t helped that my toddler recently shared her cold with me and I have been fighting it over the last week-and-a-half. We have been working on her sharing skills lately, but this was not what I had in mind!
Nonetheless, I am officially on the clock now. I have at most 5 weeks to go until baby #2 makes his arrival. Our little girl made her surprising arrival 7 weeks early (due to a placental abruption) which reminds me that our son really could show up at any time.
In light of all this, I have created a “nesting goals plan of attack” for the next couple of weeks:
#1. The kitchen
I will not be taken over by baby dishware, breast pump parts, and tiny silverware in my kitchen! Therefore, I will be organizing the following:
- Assign a space in the kitchen for baby items and breast pump cleaning supplies
- Dedicate 1 cabinet to baby kitchen supplies
- That way they don’t end up floating all over the kitchen and eventually end up lost.
- Same for baby food
- Assign a cupboard to store baby food and formula.
- Baby dish rack/cleaning area
- After cleaning I want to let babies bottles air dry in their own special place.
- Purge old kitchen and pantry stuff
- Get rid of old food and expired spices, ect..
- Organize the adult food it the pantry.
- Purge any old dishware or appliances that we haven’t used in years and are just taking up space.
#2. The baby’s closet and room
I will have a toddler and a newborn sharing a closet so I have divided their space right down the middle: newborn boy on left and toddler girl on right.
- Organize the baby’s clothes into size and season
- After baby comes home I know I will be way too tired to sift through onsies to find the right sizes.
- Hang as much clothing as possible
- I have found that it is so much easier and more organized to keep my kid’s stuff hanging up in the closet.
- Things tend to get lost in the bottom of bins and backs of drawers. Hanging clothes on hangers makes them easier to see and keeps them from getting wrinkled.
- Sort accessories
- Assign drawers or use tools to organize socks, headbands, hats, mittens, and other tiny accessories in place.
#3. Purge stuff and deep clean
De-clutering is great. It is so much easier to keep an organized house when you dont have a bunch of extra stuff you don’t need or use all over the house. My philosophy is that if it’s not serving a purpose or bringing me joy in some way then it’s got to go. Physical clutter just makes things more stressful because it makes the house messier and harder to keep picked up.
- Stuff to organize and purge
- Go through bathrooms, kitchen, toy stations, bedrooms and even garage.
- Donate old toys that are no longer being used.
- Donate our daughters clothes that she has grown out of to other friends having little girls.
- Anything that doesn’t have a purpose and we haven’t used in two years needs to be donated to someone who will use it.
- Deep clean the kitchen
- Get rid of old food and expired spices.
- Organize the pantry.
- Hire a house cleaner
- I really want to have the bathrooms cleaned really well, specifically the bathtubs.
#4. Other random stuff
- Make and freeze foods
- Prepare and freeze frozen lasagnas and crock pot cooker ingredients.
- Note: Cooking is not my thing. We will see how successful I really am at this task. My idea of cooking has always been to throw a bunch of things in a bowl and mix it together. That is why I make a lot of salads and smoothies in my nutri bullet. However, I don’t want to have to keep running off to the store with two tiny humans in tow. I’ll give it my best.
- Big items I still need for the new baby
- a double stroller
My most important final nesting goal is to spend as much one-on -one time with this adorable unicorn as possible.
- a second sound machine
- a second video camera for viewing baby in crib.
That’s it! Phew, I’m getting tired just looking at all these nesting goals. We will see how much of this I can actually get done in the next five weeks. I need to keep in mind that I still have a two-year-old to care for and I am scheduled to work until 6 days before I give birth. So, it is probably a good idea for me to keep my expectations within a reasonable range.
There is a saying: “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you’ll end up among the stars.” (I work better with positive motivation if you can’t tell already by my other posts). In other words, I can just do the best I can and surely I will get a large chuck of this done in time.
Thanks for reading!
Sarah, Mother Nurse Love
by Sarah Jividen | Dec 21, 2017 | Pregnancy, The-Motherhood
I’m officially in the “nesting phase” of pregnancy.
The American Pregnancy Organization describes nesting as when pregnant women feel the “overwhelming desire to get your home ready for your new baby.”
That is exactly me in a nutshell right about now.
I am “nesting” just like this mama bird trying to get her home organized for her babies
I had my 30 week appointment a few days ago. Our little man is measuring at 32 weeks and is already weighing in at a hefty 4lbs 7oz. That’s already more then our daughter Zoe weighed at birth and she was 7 weeks early! So it already looks like I’m going to have a big baby boy.
Aside from feeling like a blimp I would say everything is pretty great. I am still able to work without restrictions (I do however have to wear compression stockings to get through 12 hour ER shifts).
So now I’m embracing my new nesting phase.
Just in the past week I have really gotten down to business:
My house has never been so clean and organized.
Our house never really gets super messy, but I have been feeling the urge to clean and organize much more then usual. For example, before 7:30am this morning I had already vacuumed the house, finished a load of laundry and organized the kitchen cupboards.
Don’t get me wrong, I like a clean house. But I am way more into cleaning and organizing this week then I have been in a really long time.
I organized all my to-do lists on Trello
I am 99% paperless and hate having lists floating around my house. If it isn’t able to be easily accessed on my phone then I might as well not even have it. Especially now that I am a mom. Paper lists just aren’t practical anymore.
Recently I discovered an amazing app called Trello and it has revolutionized my organization and planning skills. Trello basically allows me to organize and prioritizes my to-do lists and projects using boards, lists and cards. It’s all on my phone and easy to access.
I easily organized my personal boards by: grocery lists, random to-do lists, house projects, new baby to do-lists, and blog to do list. Each list can be broken down into separate cards and you can make notes on each one.
For example, my blog board is separated into 3 separate topics: mom, nurse and website to-do. I can further organize my mom board into additional topics : baby/kid, mom, pregnancy, health, environmental. Then each of those is broken down with individual “cards” that I can add specific tasks to.
It sounds confusing but it is seriously the best for people who like to be organized and efficient. It has really helped enhance my “nesting” abilities.
I am purging anything I dont’ use or need.
I am really trying to minimize the stuff in our house. If it is not serving a purpose of bringing me joy in some way, it is leaving the Jividen household.
This week’s priority was my closet. If I haven’t worn it in a year, it got tossed. In fact, I have never owned so few clothes in my life. And it actually feels really good. Everything I have now I actually wear (or will wear as soon as I’m not a pregnant mama anymore).
Next stop: the garage! That will be a much bigger task.
I organized my kid’s closet.
Our kids are going to share a room for the foreseeable future (wish me luck on this one). Fortunately, the room has a nice sized walk-in closet with plenty of room for both kid’s wardrobes and storage.
Each child now has there own very organized side of the closet, split right down the middle. I even organized all their clothing by size and season. Nesting win.
In preparation for baby #2 I boxed up all of our daughter’s outgrown baby clothes into large bins, and they are ready for delivery to my other soon-to-be mama friends. They surely must also be in nesting mode and organizing like crazy like I am.
I had a 2nd crib delivered tonight.
Thank god for Amazon Prime. What in the world did mom’s do before it existed?
I am only 2.5 weeks away for the time I gave birth to Zoe at 33 weeks and 7 weeks prematurely. So I really don’t see this as jumping the gun at all because babies really can show up at any time.
Zoe may be a little confused as to why she has 2 cribs in her room now, but that’s OK. It will give her time to get used to it before another small human comes in.
We are buying a new car this weekend.
A Subaru Outback to be exact. After about a year of research into what the safest automobile is for small children, the Subaru Outback keeps coming back as the clear winner. I had one once before when I lived in Denver and they really are dependable and safe cars.
We will be donating my husbands car this weekend too.
My Christmas decorations are ready to be put up.
My nesting list includes decorating for Christmas as soon as it is socially acceptable. How can I resist when this little face is so excited about decorations?
This one has been HUGE for me this week. In my nesting frenzy, I am so excited to get ready for the holidays. Especially now that our 2 year old daughter is so ecstatic about special events and decorations. It just makes it so much more fun for me.
Seriously, if it wasn’t considered inappropriate I would have starting putting up our tree tonight (3 weeks before Thanksgiving). I just ordered a new, much larger tree since we have the space for it now and it was just delivered this afternoon.
On my Trello app I have already listed which new tree decorations I will be purchasing this week. I am so excited to get them and decorate that I can barely wait.
I’m not sure where this burst of extra energy is coming from.
But I’m going with it until the baby tells me I’m tired again. It’s not like I have any extra time or anything. I’m still working almost 40 hours a week as an emergency room nurse and I have a very energetic toddler at home.
I have read that there is an evolutionary component to the nesting phase that women have during there pregnancies. Apparently there have been several studies done on this maternal phenomenon. I experienced the same thing during my first pregnancy with my daughter. Only I had way more time to do it!
Whatever it is that is giving my ever-growing body an extra kick, Ill take it. I’m sure it won’t be long until I’m too big to even want to do a lot of these things. Until then, I will continue nesting away!
Sarah, Mother Nurse Love
