Four years after moving into their house, the Osbornes are finally unpacking. That’s when things start to get complicated.
So my wife, Caroline, has been on this huge nesting bender. In fact, I dare say it’s the nesting bender of all nesting benders. Because not only are we preparing for child number five (Grand Finale Osborne), we’re also moving into our house.
That’s right. Moving into our house. The one we’ve been living in for nearly four years now. Because just 12 hours after we originally moved in Caroline was put on hospitalized bed rest for what ended up totaling 11 weeks. Suffice it to say during that time, very little got accomplished. Then, of course, the tiny trio came on the scene and, well, we haven’t been the same since.
Which is why it feels like we never officially moved in. At least not like we would have under “normal” circumstances. But Caroline’s aggressive nesting initiative is changing all that.
Here’s what has gone down thus far:
- We moved Kirby into the boys’ room and the boys into the playroom and the playroom down to the basement.
- We got a new bed for Alli and broke down her old bunk bed and moved both units into the boys’ room where they now reside, albeit without their erstwhile bunk status.
- Kirby now sleeps in a bed we recently got out of storage that used to belong to Caroline when she was a little girl.
- Kirby’s old room? It’s now Grand Finale’s nursery, complete with the day bed that used to be in the boys’ old room and a crib that used to be Sam’s.
Confused? Me too. But when the dust finally settled, three of our four children were sleeping in different rooms and all four of them on new beds. It shouldn’t take a math major to figure out that Caroline was the driving force behind it all, which—when you think about it—means my wife has been involved with more sleeping arrangements than Heidi Fleiss.
Oooh. Hooker metaphors involving your pregnant wife are probably a bad call.
So let’s just go back to saying that Caroline’s on a nesting bender. But I’m telling you, this is no garden-variety bender, folks. This is an epic bender. Which, when you think about it, kinda makes Caroline the Amy Winehouse of nesting.
Only, unlike Winehouse, Caroline’s husband has never been incarcerated. (Okay, once. But that whole deal was total bullshit. I swear.) Yet I have been on house arrest ever since this bender started. Because pretty much all I ever do these days is execute whatever project Caroline’s concocted. Although this weekend I at least took solace in knowing the bulk of it was behind me. Until I strolled through the garage on Friday afternoon only to be greeted by this daunting sight:
“HONEY!? What are all these boxes?”
“Oh those?” Caroline asked while flipping her wrist. “Just a coupla things I ordered from Pottery Barn to better organize the toys.”
“What’s wrong with our current toy-organization deal?”
“Um, it sucks?” Caroline answered.
Crickets.
So yours truly got crackin’ on the latest in a long series of projects which have sprung from Caroline’s aggressive nesting initiative. Now, as many of us know, the whole put-it-together-out-of-the-box deal can go either way. Yet I’m happy to report that this one went well. I assembled all nine components of the wall unit in a little over two hours. The last one? It only took me seven minutes, thank you very much. And the end result was, indeed, much better.
Yet, I still wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. For there remained the task of mounting the unit to the wall such that it would never topple over onto one of our tiny trio, or Grand Finale, for that matter.
“Don’t you feel good about all of this?” asked Jill, one of my wife’s friends who had lent a hand with the mounting.
“What? Putting all that together?”
“Yeah. And the mounting, too. Don’t you feel good about that?”
Just then Caroline walked by, her swollen belly attesting to the 31 weeks of pregnancy she’s already endured.
“You know, Jill, I really do,” I began as I pointed to my wife. “Because, I gotta say, it’s been quite some time since I’ve mounted anything.”
“You’re a jackass,” Caroline said nonchalantly and without breaking stride as she made her way into another room.
“Oh, c’mon girl,” I said following her. “That train left the station at week 24 and you know it.”
Regardless, at least this latest project of the aggressive nesting initiative had a, um, happy ending.
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Top Photo: james.thompson/Flickr
You are a jackass, which doesn’t remotely stop me from loving you like a brother, cos I’ll admit that I have my jackass moments too. 🙂 And, hey, now I’ve seen the house! :-p Keep going, brother. And soon you might get the chance to mount . . . . . um . . . . . a familiar project? Sorry, there was no way to make that safe. But I didn’t make hooker analogies. One point for me. ;-p Looking forward to the arrival of G.F.O. Who, upon this momentary whim, will not be thought of as “Grand Funk… Read more »
hate to break it to you, biggs, but that’s not my house. stock photo, i’m afraid. good to hear from you, though, buddy. long time no speak… hope all is well w/ you…
i love me some HPR. and you’d love C. she’s tip top.
It goes without saying i adore you, however? knowing your wife can call a jackass when she sees one? makes me adore her without having met her………and when you said 31 weeks? i had sympathy pains. go buy her something. anything. it just needs to be expensive.