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Every year has its ups and downs, but 2008 was awfully heavy on the “downs” and fairly light on the “ups” around here, and for most of our friends and family. In fact, I can’t remember a year that was so universally bad for so many people I care about. It wasn’t all bad (a beautiful healthy daughter is a pretty big bright spot, I’ll admit), but it was…pretty bad. I can’t say that I’m sorry at all to see the end of this year.

The new year can only bring better things - I’m ready for it. Happy New Year to everyone!

I don’t know what exactly I was thinking when I suggested that moving house right when we were having a baby was a good idea. To be fair, I didn’t exactly present it as a “good” idea…more of a “not as terrible as it sounds at first” idea. I will say right up front that if you are considering it yourself, do not do it. Seriously - it is a TERRIBLE idea.

When I say “right when we are having a baby” I am not exaggerating at all: the baby was born on Friday, the movers came on Sunday (to pack) and Monday (to move everything) and I left the hospital on Tuesday…to come home to a new house still in day-after-move-in disarray. It all worked out (or is working out) in the end, as things tend to do, but it was really, incredible, unbelievably bad at times. And that was with a not insignificant amount of help (including the fact that we did almost none of the packing ourselves and paid the movers to do it for us).

The good points:

• We don’t live in our old, much-too-small house anymore, which was obviously the goal.
• The new house has a kitchen that’s big enough for two (or more) to cook in and a bathroom that does not require acrobatic skills to share in the morning.
• We really love our new neighborhood. For one thing, it’s an actual neighborhood! Where people talk to each other and everything. Amazing.
• Eventually the stress of the move will all blend in with the new-baby stress, and we’ll hardly remember the difference. (Wishful thinking, maybe?)
• Recovering from major abdominal surgery and taking care of a newborn are really good excuses for not unpacking too quickly.

The bad points:

• Bringing a new baby home to a new, largely unfamiliar house that’s still almost entirely filled with boxes is not all that conducive to any kind of restful recovery period. This will result in a lot of crying on the part of the hormonal new mother.
• The person not actually giving birth is stuck overseeing the moving process and misses out on way too much of the boring sitting-around-the-hospital time that is actually really nice bonding time.
• The person whose bright idea it was to move will probably feel very guilty about how much work the other person is doing and also how much boring bonding they are missing and will become extremely emotional about it all, probably involving a good bit of crying (again). (Okay, maybe that’s just me.)
• Not unpacking quickly means that you will be living in a disaster area for a long time. You will spend large amounts of time balancing a baby in one arm while tossing boxes at random looking for things.

So, to recap: DO NOT move at the same time you are having a baby. (Or your partner is having a baby, or anyone in your household is having a baby.) Figure out some other solution on some other timeline. Trust me - any other plan at all will be easier. If you really, really have no choice in the matter, though, just keep reminding yourself that it will all work out in the end. At least that’s what I’m (still) doing.

It’s totally cliché to say that I’ve been busy, but…well, I’ve been busy. I was working full-time, and also freelancing almost full-time. There was a vacation in there somewhere, and a lot of other busy-ness both boring and less boring. We moved - that was not boring, but not a picnic.

Oh, and then there was this:

Caroline Amelia
October 3, 2008

I won’t say “and now I’m back!” but hopefully I’ll be around a little bit more.

Some people wrap their positive pregnancy tests with pretty paper and ribbons and present them by way of announcement. Some save them for…well, not the baby book, I guess. Something. (How would you fit that in a book?) I know of some people with a half-dozen positive tests sitting in a drawer or cabinet just because it seems wrong to throw them out.

I, on the other hand, have never peed on a stick and had a positive result. Plenty of negative results, until I realized what a complete waste of time and money that was given my generally consistent thousand-day cycle, but not a positive test to be found.

Abby is an IVF success story, so our positive test was actually a blood test at the doctor’s office. I was downtown in a meeting when the nurse called with the results, but she didn’t leave a message. I knew I would be an emotional wreck no matter which way the results went, so I didn’t want to call until after we got back to our office. By then I figured I’d be a wreck driving home, so I might as well wait until I got home to call her back.

When I walked into the house I found my husband, who was working from home that day for whatever reason, with the most serious face. He told me that the nurse had called the house with the results of the pregnancy test, and I totally lost it. I was sure he’d be smiling if the test was positive, after all, not being so serious about it! It took me almost five minutes for the rest of his sentence to penetrate - that we were pregnant! He had known that I was pregnant for hours before I did, which I found strangely amusing (and still do).

(Swistle asked how we found out we were pregnant. Who am I to pass up blog fodder?)

I haven’t taken many pictures over the last week (why? I have no idea) but I am still madly in love with this one. I still can’t quite wrap my head around the fact that I really do not have a baby anymore - I have an amazing little girl, instead. I thought I’d share this for Best Shot Monday.