People keep asking me, "What does Carys think about the new baby?"
To which I give them a weird look and wonder if the two year olds they know are more perceptive than mine. She doesn't have a clue! She thinks nothing about the new baby! She thinks she wants some ice cream.
We have told her that there's a baby in my tummy, and if you ask what's in my tummy, she'll say, "Baby! It's growing!" She will ask to put lotion on the baby or tickle the baby or kiss the baby (AKA my stomach) but come on. She doesn't really KNOW that there's a baby in my tummy or at least understand what that concept means overall, even if in some abstract way she does actually think that there's a baby inside there. She also now thinks that there's a baby in her tummy and a baby in daddy's tummy (though we've told her it's just mommy's tummy).
I tried to explain that mommy has a tiny baby in my tummy, and that the baby is going to grow and grow and grow until it gets bigger and then it will come out and it will live with us, and that the baby growing is why mommy's tummy is getting bigger. I read her a "Big Sister" book and we play baby with her dolls.
But really, let's be real. She's two. She's in for a rude awakening no matter how much we talk about it or try to prepare for it.
I expect Carys to both completely adore the new baby and completely loathe the new baby. I think she'll be jealous of the nursing (though it's been a while since she nursed, she definitely still recalls it and even asks sometimes), and that she'll probably try to push the baby off me so I can focus on her, and throw regular fits that I'm not paying as much attention to her (the likes of which I am not accustomed to since she's so easygoing at the moment). On the other hand, I think Carys will be very possessive of the baby and want to do everything: hold the baby, feed the baby, change the baby, etc.
I think she'll try to give the baby her toys and will be very worried when the baby cries and try to soothe the baby.
Second-plus-time-moms are laughing at these predictions, I'm sure. They're probably all a complete given, par for the course, DUH LARA.
As far as plans for when the baby is actually with us...right now, the plan is for Carys to stay in the room she's in. It's her room, and having her keep it will hopefully help the transition. We have no plans to transition her to a toddler bed yet - she's
perfectly content in her crib and shockingly hasn't tried to climb out.
The baby will sleep in our room for the first six months or so in the
Rock 'N Play if all goes as planned, so there's no hurry to get Carys out of the crib - that's another year of use she can get out of it before we have to start figuring out what we want to do.
The new baby - well, at least the new baby's THINGS if not the new baby - will officially go to the third bedroom, which is currently a storage room literally filled three feet high with clothes and unused furniture and computer parts. What will happen to all that shit? NO IDEA. Although I'm not opposed to just throwing it all away since it's been in there for ages and ages and most of it hasn't been needed in all that time. It will probably take a year to sort through everything so I should probably get on that at some point while I'm still capable of lifting things without a blimp of a belly getting in the way. (UPDATE: I actually wrote this post a week ago and I got all my shit cleaned out of the room. Chris, you're up. Adios computer stuff!)
The third bedroom is currently painted a very dark grey, with some sort of textured paint that my mother-in-law chose for it (it was Chris's computer room for a long time, and she wanted to design it for him). I need to look into what we need to do to remove the paint, and if it ends up being too much of a pain, it might just stay gray and I'll work around that. Yellow and gray and orange and gray are both so trendy right now (maybe even heading downward) but they're both combos I like. Gray and peach? Gray and mint green, maybe? I don't, however, like the idea of a black crib in a room with dark gray walls, so I'm not sure if I'd try to paint the crib or if I'd convert the crib to be a toddler bed for Carys and buy a new (new to us - probably used off Craigslist) white crib for the nursery. With such dark walls, everything else would have to be very bright and light. If we are able to repaint completely, I'm thinking one yellow/white striped wall and the rest a light mint green. That might look better in my head than in reality; we'll see.
That's all hypothetical right now, though. The way things are looking right now, nothing will be ready for the new baby until around 2015. Which is a problem since the baby will be here this year.
I really wanted a deep grey room for Ethan with bright bright rainbow colored accents, and it was a no-go. Puh-leeeeeeeease live out my beautiful grey baby room dreams for me!
ReplyDelete