Operation Baby Clothes

I always get slightly huffy when people talk about nesting because I think it is less of a biological phenomenon and more a way to define women by our reproductive capacity and also more than a little patronizing/infantilizing. And then there are days like yesterday when all I want to do is bake cupcakes and buy tiny baby clothes.

I did bake cupcakes, but instead of buying baby clothes, I went through the 7 giant tubs of baby and toddler clothes in our guest room closet (it's a big closet). I decided anything 12 months or smaller (and in this I included the 12-18 month size from Gap and Old Navy, but that was my absolute limit) would come to live upstairs regardless of whether it looked seasonably plausible for a September baby. Anything 18 months-2T would continue to live in the basement. All the 3T stuff resides in Jack's closet, and the 4T stuff is hanging up in the guest closet waiting for him. I finally have a system!

Or I will when Ben cleans out his dresser in the baby's room and I buy about 100 more teeny hangers and do 40 loads of little laundry.

Right now, I have this:


I was hoping it would look less Hoarder-like as a Hipstaprint.

Ben and I are painting the old condo. We are done with the bathrooms and the downstairs. We even finally painted our garish bedroom a lovely buttery yellow: something we should have done while we actually lived there.


The biggest PITA has been the kids' room. We were just going to touch up random scratches, crayon marks, and places where pictures used to hang, but our (my-- I was so proud of myself for spending a day getting paint stirred at Menards and covering some damage- painting a room or two is very zen. Beyond that and it just sucks) touch ups dried terrible, and you could see where the 2 layers of paint were. Instead of just touching up some more, we decided to paint the room a blue that is NOT the color of painter's tape. Let;s just say, this will be a multi-coat job and has already involved some ugly crying.

And we have been spending lots of time at the park. Barefoot.







From now on when I feel like buying baby clothes, I am going to buy stuff for Harry instead. Trickle-down theory may have ruined the economy and destroyed social programs since the Reagan era, but it definitely powers our clothing system here at home.