Thank you everyone for the well-wishes in my last post. It’s definitely a wild ride so far, and while there’s some (huge) financial stress that’s looming over all of this, I’m slowly getting excited about it. I just wish I could stop the exaggerated-by-hormones worrying that keeps interfering.

The good news is that I’m mostly over the morning sickness. Other than a weird doomed-by-toothpaste incident this weekend, I’ve been almost entirely nausea free for about two weeks now. The biggest problem I’m having these days is fatigue. I’m getting more sleep than I can ever remember in my life, yet I feel like a walking zombie most of the time. Plus, with getting home around 7 pm every night, I basically eat dinner and then go crash out before 8:30, only to barely wake up with the alarm in the morning. SO I feel my entire life right now is work and sleep. I’m craving me-time, and it’s just not happening. I can’t even really get it on the train as I normally do because I can’t enjoy my morning coffee, so I’m not really getting that wake-up during the ride in.

Ah well, hopefully it’ll pass. While I know that I should enjoy and embrace the sleep while I can get it, I’d like to also be able to enjoy some of this time to do the things I know I won’t be able to for quite some time after the baby is born. (like, you know… STITCHING). I have reserved a full week off of vacation time in late October. The main goal that week is to clean out and pack up my office so it can be converted into the nursery. I also hope to have a big last hurrah with my stitching that week – starting with my final Stitcher’s Hideaway retreat for the foreseeable future, and then another full week off afterward. After that, I’ll basically limit myself to only a couple of projects to be held for when I can steal a few minutes here and there. Everything else will be carefully packed away for quite a while.

We have started to make some preparations toward the big event, although they’re disguised under “stuff we needed to do anyway.” The big purchase this weekend was a new dryer. We’d inherited one with the house, and we got a good seven years out of it before it completely broke about a month ago (whatever turns the drum is no longer attached at all). Due to the dryer being well over 20 years old, we decided it was better to just invest in a new, energy efficient one. We also inherited a much newer washer from the mom of a friend recently – so both appliances are being replaced. The washer we have still works, but it’s also pretty shaky. We’ll probably put the washer up on Craigslist for a “free for pickup – as is” sort of a deal. Whomever wants to get it fixed can have at it.

Erich’s taking a week off at the end of the month to do some projects around the house – giving it a good scrubbing since I’ve been so out of commission from fatigue, plus a couple of cleaning out crap we don’t need projects. There will likely be a LOT of books involved in this, as both of us celebrate being bookworms. I’m going to check our library’s donation guidelines, but I also may offer them up here on the blog with the “you just pay shipping” caveat.

On the downside of things, we’re looking at having to add a second car payment on top of the upcoming childcare expenses. Erich’s car is on its last legs. He brought it in for what was expected to be a simple fix, and there’s about $1,500 worth of issues now, plus the transmission’s getting spotty… again. The car has over 150,000 miles on it and he does a lot of driving for work, so he needs a reliable vehicle. He doesn’t want to drive mine since it’s a stick and he’s usually in Fall River, MA – which is hill-tastic. The last thing we need is two car payments at the same time, but somehow we’ll figure it out, I suppose. Lots of budgeting will be required, and maybe this time I’ll ask for a long-term favor/loan from family to possibly push mine closer to being paid off so we can relieve at least some of that.

If nothing else, at least I know there won’t be any stitching purchases to interfere with all of this. Between expecting to not have much time, plus having a ton of WIPs as it is, I can definitely put off ANY purchases for a few years at this point (even if I’m going to be craving new patterns).

So yeah – it’s been a bit of a whirlwind around here. I’m okay, but I’m panicking a little. I know in the end we’ll figure it all out, but right now that’s not helping me to stay calm and shut my doom-and-gloom mind up.

Hopefully the fatigue wears off so I can start feeling a little more sane – at least about the things I can control right now (like… my house).

And one of these days, I’ll post WIPocalypse and TUSAL pics. I just need to remember to keep my phone charged so I can take photos!