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When I found out I was pregnant this time around one of the first things I said to Luke was that I wanted to take it easy on house projects, big changes, extra stress in general. My pregnancy with Little A was anything but calm. Six weeks in the business I had worked at for almost three years met with demise in a fire. Suddenly I was without work and trying to figure out what to do next. Would someone even hire me pregnant? It felt unethical to leave out that detail since a maternity leave would right around the corner. After a lot of discussion Luke and I realized what we really wanted was for me to be home with our baby and if that meant tightening our belts we would do so. But it wasn't all smooth sailing from there. We were faced with a house purchased only a few months before that was barely livable. Though we had already replaced all the plumbing, the furnace, replastered walls, and gutted the bathroom there were still some major issues lingering such as almost no electricity and no kitchen. Oh yeah almost forgot, as the warm weather approached we realized the house held an unbearable stink radiating off the floors (thanks to a previous owner with animal issues). This meant sanding the wood floors waaaay down and refinishing them. With all we had to accomplish to make our house safe for an infant and with our income sharply decreased it was a very difficult season in our life.
I had hoped this time around things would very different, but life has a way of throwing you a curveball. The curveball, well, here I am hugely pregnant and a week ago today our house was flooded by the North Branch of the Chicago River. As the river rose and the inevitable hit I found myself full of stress and despair, but also laughing in some weird way at the irony of this being the opposite of what I expected. I thought I'd make it to end with relative calm and suddenly I was facing the opposite. The biggest items on my agenda had been to decorate the nursery and fill the freezer with easy dinners, oh naivety.
As we cleaned and tossed and tossed some more, a dumpster full and still not done, I spent the evenings trying to focus on the special arrival to come and not on the mess all around. That meant knitting a little something for my baby. Little A has since commandeered and named this teddy "Daddy Bear." I'm letting him believe it's his for now...