On Tuesday, Allie decided she was going to be an upside-down kickboxer on our entire drive home from work. Every two to three seconds, she’d kick up at my diaphragm or my stomach. The assault on my gut was making me feel sick. Mr. W suggested I recline the passenger seat to encourage her to change positions or calm down, or give her more room, so I did that. She still kept at it. Then I turned slightly to my left, which did cause her access to change a bit. But now she was kicking at my left ribs. I rolled to the right. She did it to my right ribs. I gasped for air the entire drive home, and as soon as we got home and I walked out, she stopped. The same thing happened yesterday on the drive home. If she kept practicing her kicking like this, she’s going to be able to walk the day she comes out. That’s probably what she’s preparing herself for. I told Mr. W that she hates his driving. (Who could blame her? haha)

Mr. W took Monday off from work cuz his parents and sister-in-law were still over, and well, he didn’t want to go to work. I still went to work. Mid-afternoon, he called me and said, “Look at the nanny cam.” So I typed in our internet nanny cam’s IP address and saw that in the guest-room-turned-Allie’s-room, that Mr. W had cleared out the queen bed and guest furniture, put together the crib, dragged my La-Z-Boy chenille rocker-recliner up there next to the crib, and was now rocking in the chair looking at his handywork. We have a nursery! He’s such a handyman — when he realized that there was some weird construction screwup and the rails for the drawer at the bottom of the crib were an inch farther apart than the width of the drawer, instead of calling the company (which I would’ve done), he simply went to Home Depot and bought some wood and reconstructed the bottom of the crib and redid the rails so that the drawer now fits in there. We figured it was fine, since that piece only stays there for the first couple of years anyway. When the crib converts to a toddler bed, the drawer has to come out, and when it converts to a full-size bed, again, no drawer.

For a visual, this is the crib (and dresser + hutch) that we got. Mr. W found the company, Baby Appleseed, online and fell in love with their styles. An unborn person now possesses the most expensive pieces of furniture we have in the entire house. We paid additionally for the upgrade from pine to alder, also, because Mr. W felt that when we invest in furniture expected to last 18+ years, that we should get good solid hard wood. I love that the company plants 10 trees with each crib purchased to contribute to sustainability.

I also love that despite the fact that Mr. W had made up his mind long before meeting me that he was done having more kids, he appears to be REALLY into Allie. He’s taken so much initiative on researching and picking out her stuff, and putting it all together. The only thing I’d done for the nursery so far was put all the baby gifts from the shower away in it. He sat in there with me through that, too, playing with and examining all the loot. He’s also come with me to every single baby prep class — breastfeeding, infant care basics, healthy pregnancy, and we have infant CPR, maternity hospital tour, and a series of birthing classes coming up he plans to attend with me, also. As much as he jokes about how I need to have experience changing ALL her diapers and taking care of her cuz he’d already done his tour of duty with his first two, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have some occasions when we’re actually fighting over who gets to take care of Allie’s next need. The stepkidlet is eager for her share of Allie, too. She’s already planning her next semester’s courses so that she could get certain days of the week completely off to take Allie Duty full-time. My mom had already offered to take Allie on Fridays, her weekly day off as she works 4/10s. Hopefully this will all work out to reduce the expense of a nanny.

After we had the nursery cleaned up the other day, Mr. W went and got the stepkidlet to come up and see the room. “How cuuuute!” she exclaimed over everything. I watched for maybe a spark of jealousy that Allie’s new furniture is ridiculously elaborate compared to all the hand-me-downs that the stepkidlet and the rest of us had, but there was none of that at all. Instead, she said toward my tummy, “All right, Allie, your room’s all done. The only thing missing is YOU! Do you hear me? This is your sister! Come out and play!”