After almost 9 months of reading, planning, learning, cleaning and shopping, it finally feels like Eric and I are prepared for Little Z. This has been a source of stress for both of us, and really for Eric even more than myself, especially over the last month, but this past weekened we were able to tackle a lot of items on our to-do list that had been bugging us.
After our baby shower, Eric and I went through all of the items we had received and purchased and came up with a list of all the basic things we still needed to get before Little Z arrived - everything from infant tylenol to receiving blankets to nursing bras. We also made a list of things around the house that we wanted to do (like deep cleaning the carpets, rearranging furniture, installing the carseat, etc), and we went from there. Eric spent all day Saturday cleaning our place from top to bottom - we had taken my parents' deep cleaning Bissel and he went to town. It seriously took him all day, but our apartment was so fresh afterward and we both felt much better about bringing home the baby into our place. While Eric was busy with the apartment, I spent Saturday driving all over creation to a lot of the basic supplies and such we still needed. I headed to Baltimore first thing to pick up our glider and ottoman and it was even better seeing it in person than I imagined (seriously, it makes me smile each time I look at it in the living room b/c I cannot believe how good of a deal we got!). After Baltimore, I headed out to Buy Buy Baby, Babies R Us and Target to get lots of the little essentials we still needed. Thanks to the Babies R Us coupons that Tariq and Raabia gave us at our shower, I was able to get the amazing breastpump I wanted at 20% off!
On Sunday, we tackled the clothing and spent the morning washing, folding, and organizing all of Little Z's newborn and 0-3 sized clothing. Around lunch time, I headed out to the outlets in Leesburg to get the rest of the items we needed for his layette. Luckily, the Carter's outlet was having a huge sale and EVERYTHING was 50% off, so I definitely made out like a bandit! I also hit up the Osh Kosh B'Gosh outlet and Polo Baby outlet, but didn't have quite as much luck. I did find the PERFECT coming home outfit though at the Saks outlet, so that finished off the shopping with a bang:) Kohl's was nearby so I stopped on my way home and picked up a couple more things, then made a detour to Marshall's on the way home as well. I have to say that I LOVE Marshall's! I found so much cute, preppy stuff there (definitely not on my list, but in my defense things were on clearance and they were in 3-6 and 6-9 month sizes:P). I was so excited by all the good finds and so relieved that I was finally able to find things that I liked for little boys! I had been struggling with finding cute things that I really liked (basically because I HATE little boys clothing that is covered from head to toe in cartoon characters and/or animals) and it felt so good to feel like I found nice things at really good prices.
So now all the clothes have been bought and laundered, all the furniture has been set up, and the diapers have been unpacked and are ready for action. Now all that's left to do is wait for Little Z to make his appearance. I still feel like there is sooo much that we don't know, but I think I've also finally come to terms with the fact that we are never going to feel like we have all the information or all the answers. We've read and researched and armed ourselves with as much information as we can, and that's all we can do. I feel like a lot of it will come to us with trial and error and we'll figure it out as we go along - it will definitely be challenging, but it can't be that bad, right? There are 6+ billion people on this planet and somehow I doubt that number would keep growing if parenthood and raising a child were as terrible and impossible as they sometimes appear to be....
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