[audio http://www.adaptationtech.com/music_files/01%20Home%20This%20Year.mp3]

Home This Year – Virginia Coalition

So it’s a proven fact that new mothers, near the time of birth of their little ones, go through what is called a nesting period:  Cleaning, setting up stuff in a room, packing a bag, yelling at their husband to do something over, spending a lot on the credit card…..you know, basic stuff to prep for the little one to arrive.

Well a little known fact about yours truly, is that his OCD tendencies have created a need for what I’m terming as “Mesting”, or Male Nesting.  You won’t find this referenced in many of those baby books, or on those baby websites because of two reasons:

1.) I just made up the word

2.) Men don’t admit to this stuff.

This process happens sometime close to when your wife’s naps become more frequent and random, and your ability to lay around blaming your sloth on the fact that you’re “conserving energy” for your pending child just doesn’t seem to fool anyone.  For me it means going after several outstanding projects that don’t necessarily have direct correlation to the baby.  Things like getting a house phone (for the safety of your baby and wife), maybe some small reading lamps in your bedroom (for late night feedings, I swear honey), and thoroughly organizing the basement with new shelving units (it’s for diapers, at least one shelf I promise). The one major example that I feel truly represents my neurosis would be my constructing, and deconstructing 3 different shelving units for our master bathroom to make for some additional space for baby bath items.  Yes folks, I bought 3 different shelving units, then took apart 2 of them and returned them in an attempt to achieve a simple function that a small box probably could have done.  Total time spent : 6 hours over 3 days, not including online research and on hold time when calling stores looking for items in stock.  The first one was ridiculously small and dangerously prone to tipping. The second, while very nice, was the wrong color.  It said Espresso, it was not Espresso.  The color of the box was Espresso, but  believe me, it was far from it.  We ended up with another piece of what I call “cube” furniture and a large pile of return receipts, but I have to say a rather pleased baby daddy.

After about a month of little projects, the only things left can probably wait until after she’s born, as her room is outfitted to the hill.  We even have the iBaby Monitor mounted in a prime location, ready for all those late night “is she still breathing” freak out moments.  For now my Mesting is done, but I still have hope for the replacement of the driveway concrete and patio, using the excuse that “she needs a safe place to learn to walk and not worry about falling over cracks”.  We’ll just have to see how much I can get done in the 2 week paternity leave that I think I’m going to be able to take.

Oh, and just an FYI.  This writing a blog a day thing gets a little hard when you’re in panic mode.  We’re at 4 centimeters people, meaning that we could go any day.  So I’m going to keep writing if you’re going to keep reading.   But if these randomly stop for 48 hours don’t go yelling at me like my friend Liz.  FYI, this is hilarious even for guys: