On leave

As of last Friday at 9pm, I am officially on maternity leave and it didn't come a second too soon. I was really struggling by the end of last week, to concentrate, to keep my speed up, just to stay awake. I've had the odd feeling of playing hooky yesterday and today, but I think I can live with that.

So I'm slowly but surely using this week to finish up baby preparations. All of the 0-3 month clothes and diapers are washed and in the dresser. I dug out the diaper pail last night and am making a new wet bag for it. I have a cloak and 2 3/4 princess dresses out of a planned four done for K's birthday present, a princess dressup box. I should be able to finish a new cover for the hideously drab child's Ikea Poang chair we got her (partly because I thought she would really like a chair all her own, but partly in hopes of keeping her out of her brother's bouncy seat).

Someone at Joann Fabrics must really love me, because flannel just went on sale for $2.49 a yard. Well, if they truly loved me, they would have done this a month ago, but still, when you have a large number of sewing projects that need flannel, it's thrilling to come across the rare sort of sale where you can afford to just pull whatever you want off the shelf without worrying about price. So I am amply set for cute flannel prints for lots of baby wipes (16 done so far), a couple new wet bags for the diaper pail, cloth pads for me, and enough left over to make some diapers in the future.

What I'm not really doing is planning K's birthday party. That would be because we can't get the phone numbers of any of the children from K's preschool that we would like to invite, and now that it's less than five days before the theoretical party, I've more or less thrown my hands up in despair. I admit, it takes a special sort of chutzpah to plan a child's birthday party on your due date, but we were planning something pretty small and informal. As it is, I've downgraded to inviting the child we've had playdates with over in the late afternoon for playing followed by dinner and cake. It's probably for the best, but I swear, next year she'll get a good party. And I'll send some cupcakes into preschool on Friday so they can celebrate there.