Preparing for Emma

Let's hope Emma's arrival isn't as overdue as this post about our sweet third child. As of today, we have less than a month until Emma's birthday! This stat fills my heart with excitement and yet makes my palms sweat with anxiety. On one hand, we cannot wait to feel the weight and warmth of Emma in our arms, and see two of our children together on earth. The moment when Emma and Lucy meet is something I dream about like a girl dreams of her wedding day. I really just can't wait to see my children together. But then there is the giant worry of integrating all of the tasks that another small person in our household will bring and wondering if I will be able to juggle it all. As with any life change, there is a period of adjustment or a learning curve, and I am anxious for that learning curve to begin, so that I can settle into life as normal again. Lucy and I have a good groove going right now, and I know I will miss the one on one time with Lucy as my baby.

I read a great piece of advice in a book the other day that made me feel like both Lucy and Emma will be okay sharing their mom and dad. Harvey Karp of the Happiest Baby on the Block books states that "sure, your older [child] got more attention from you, but what your new one doesn't get from you, [s]he will receive five times over from your older child. No one else will make your baby laugh or learn as much as [her] older sibling... A first child lives in an adult world, but a second child lives in a child's world. After you have two, they mostly just keep you around to provide them with a steady supply of love, kisses - and hot food!" I would be okay with that!

Because our family has a child in heaven, Will and I have felt like Lucy has missed out on having a sibling pretty much from the day we brought her home from the hospital. I am so glad that we have been blessed with Emma, and that Lucy and Emma get to experience the joys (and trials!) of siblinghood together. Siblings are our oldest friends. No one else understands us quite like our siblings who were raised right along with us and share the most common experiences, memories and genes! A friend pointed out to me that until they hit about 18 years of age though, it will be a constant battle of rivalry and keeping them from poking each other's eyes out. I say with every challenge overcome, there is great reward and it is our hope that Lucy and Emma will be each other's life long friends. To me, there is no better preparation for the real world than learning human relations from your siblings.

With that said, I have been documenting with pictures all of the preparations we have been making for little Emma. Sure, these preparations are no hand-knit sweaters, hats, booties and bears like I had the luxury of making while awaiting Lucy's arrival, but they were done with just as much love and meaning as the different preparations we made for Lucy.

To start off with, I have craved less with Emma than I did with Luke and Lucy. This is a good thing, as it has helped me to watch the weight gain a little bit better this time. The cravings have also been less weird, and in more moderation. Favorites of Emma's seem to be pineapple, Mediterranean food, Coke, Breyer's raspberry chocolate chip ice cream (yes, that specific!) and BACON. Lots and lots of bacon. And it has to be a certain very expensive, high-quality brand, and it only tastes good if Will makes it. A different brand or prepared by someone else is enough to make me gag. Will has surprised me on several occasions by getting up early and making me a pile of crisp bacon before he leaves for work in the morning. This is no small feat on his part, since he leaves around 6 a.m. Yup, Will not only brings home the bacon, he crisps it to perfection as well!

I have also not been as absent minded with this pregnancy either, although I am starting to wonder if it is all relative and at this point I don't even realize I am not as sharp as I used to be. Probably the most entertaining thing I've done with Emma induced pregnancy-brain is still mild compared to some of the things I did while pregnant with Luke and Lucy. We have a small dish soap bottle we keep on top of our kitchen counter, and a giant Sam's Club refill bottle we keep under the sink. It takes forever to refill the little bottle, so I had the brilliant idea to prop up the refill bottle on top of the small bottle and come back in a couple of minutes. After rigging up this ingenious time saving system I left the room and the project left my mind. Later that evening I returned to the kitchen - probably to get a bowl of Breyer's raspberry chocolate chip ice cream - and found this:

The dark colored granite counter top makes it difficult to see that there is an entire super-sized bottle of dish soap all over the counter, down the cabinets and onto the floor. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to wipe up pure, concentrated dish soap? I think I ended up having to use an entire roll of paper towel because rinsing out the dish rag was near impossible and I felt like I was reenacting an episode of I Love Lucy with the amount of bubbles it created.

Speaking of Lucy, my Lucy has really bonded with Emma throughout this pregnancy. I guess this only makes sense, as Lucy knew her baby sister's name before Will and I did. We bring her to every doctor appointment for Emma, and Lucy excitedly listens to Emma's heartbeat and watches the doctor measure my stomach. One day Lucy found a pedometer and put it on my stomach, then took a Kleenex and wiped where the pedometer was. I didn't realize what she was doing until she ran into the other room and came back with a metal tape measure of Will's and proceeded to measure my stomach with it. The pedometer was the heartbeat monitor! She tells Emma every morning, "MORNING TIME EMMA! WAKE UP!" and then talks to her in a language I do not understand but am guessing that Emma understands every word of it. Lucy also will impatiently yell "OUT, EMMA, OUT!" and firmly believes that Emma can see the world through my belly button. I hardly notice now when Lucy lifts my shirt and points my stomach in the direction of whatever it is that Lucy feels Emma should see. It is still kind of embarrassing when she tries this in public though. Here Lucy is below hugging Emma.

Lucy also talks about when Emma is born how she will hold her on the boppy pillow, and how Emma will cry. Lucy was very attached to her boppy and so a couple of months ago we told Lucy she could go to the store with us to pick out a boppy for Emma. She was extremely proud to do this, and talked about it for days. After picking out a new boppy for Emma, she decided that she was done with her boppy and has used Emma's ever since for playing and sits on it when we rock her before naps and bedtime. I am assuming Emma will be using Lucy's old boppy - or worse yet, none at all at this point! Here Lucy is below, practicing how she will hold Emma on her new boppy.

Part of our preparing for Emma's arrival involved a new found determination to tackle several items still on our to-do list from our move into our house a year ago now. One of the things we loved about our house when we found it was the fact that it had walk-in closets that were freshly painted and spacious, but didn't have any shelves or rods. Before moving in, I thought this was a former organizing professional's dream come true. They were a blank slate and I could turn them into whatever I dreamed up. Upon moving in, I found that it was impossible to unpack any boxes because most of what you box up and move is kept in closets on shelves and hanging from rods! Since there was a million more important things to do when we moved in, we designed and built the master bedroom closet and stacked boxes in all of the rest. Emma's room was the only closet in the house that had been left with shelves and rods, so we hung everything else from winter coats to formal wear in her closet. Not to mention that Emma's room was then turned into a giant walk-in closet for all of the boxes we just had no idea what to do with. So, to empty out Emma's room and closet, it caused a chain reaction through the rest of the house - we began by building the closet in the living room to get the winter coats out of Emma's closet. From there, we moved on to the office closet which needed a caution sign hanging from it as random objects would fall on you anytime you opened the door. Once that was built and organized to my heart's content we moved on to Lucy's closet. Here Will is below in Lucy's closet. Seconds before the picture was taken, he narrowly missed losing an eye to a closet rod wielding toddler.

And then finally we were able to walk into Emma's room without stubbing our toes, and assess it as a future nursery. It was at this point we determined that the room was better suited as a giant walk-in closet than a bedroom. To save on space and to avoid having to guide the door between the blades on the ceiling fan every time we wanted to open or close it (yes, the room is that small), we decided to install a pocket door. This was a great idea in theory, although while the wall was torn out we encountered more than a few surprises and a ton of dust. Perhaps the most stressful part of the whole thing was that half the upstairs was veiled in plastic only days before Christmas, while our Christmas decorations on the main floor were covered with a fine sprinkling of white plaster and drywall dust that I could only wish would melt away in the spring like snow. Here is the wall, pre-demolition.The wall post-demolition:And finally, the finished door pre-paint and pre-clean-up. Now that it is finished, it was a great idea, and I am so glad we (Will) did it. It makes the room seem so much bigger and is more space efficient. Not to mention we don't have to worry any more about leaving the ceiling fan on when we open or close the door because the truth of the matter is, if Will and I couldn't remember to turn the fan off before we exited or entered the room, how could we expect our toddler to remember or better yet, care!?!

Once the door was installed, the real fun began. We picked out a light mint green color for the walls and decided on a purple butterfly theme. Upon searching the internet for decorating inspiration we realized that not only was Emma's name one of the most popular girl names of the past decade, so too was our 'original' butterfly theme one of the most popular baby girl nursery decors.

I created and sewed a butterfly patterned French memory board for Emma's room while Will painted some really cute three dimensional butterflies we found at Target in various shades of purple.We then hung the memory board and butterflies this past week, and they really have made Emma's room as unique as a girl named Emma with a butterfly-themed room could be.

Here is Emma's finished room. The only thing missing is a crib, as we are still playing the waiting game to see if Lucy will outgrow hers before Emma moves out of the bassinet in our room. Worst case scenario we will buy a second crib, but we are going to hold out for as long as possible to see how things unfold.Finally, I completed a much dreaded task for my sweet girl's arrival, and I don't mean labor and delivery! We used cloth diapers for Lucy and saved a ton of money as well as hopefully the environment. When we bought the set of diapers for Lucy, it was a big upfront cost, but we had determined that the savings for Lucy alone would make it worth it and then we could sit back and watch the savings multiply with each subsequent child that wore them. After 20 plus months of use though, the diapers were in sad shape. It became clear once Lucy was diaper-free that if we had any hope of getting another child through them they would need some serious sewing repairs. The company who manufactures the diapers sells a refresher kit for $1/diaper and I decided that for $32 and a little of my time it would be well worth it. It was just so tedious!!! But I am finally finished, and feeling very proud of myself. The diapers are again ready to hold poop and pee!So you see, sweet Emma, I may not have had the time or energy to knit you cute little baby items, but I did grit my teeth and sew repairs on 32 cloth diapers for you. If that isn't love, I don't know what is. I know, I know, they are hand-me-down diapers, previously pooped and peed in by your sister, but with my repairs look almost as good as new and I can't wait to put them on your little bottom! Being the second living child in a family is quite different from the first, but I promise you Emma, you have been a much loved member of our family since the day we learned about you growing in my tummy, and we have truly enjoyed the last several months preparing a place for you in our home.