early morning thoughts: where did August go?

Monday is bringing September with it, and that means the start of classes. I had a whole list of things to accomplish with my "break" this summer... and I'm actually surprised to say that most of them were completed. Unfortunately, the things that have been neglected most are baby-related (I fixed the sewing machine, for example, but never got around to making the burp rags). I saw my doctor this week and he set a birth date, so now I'm looking at less than six weeks to get everything together. We don't have a crib, which doesn't concern me because we use a bassinet for the first few months. We don't have all of the clothes sorted, which isn't too bad because at least they're all in one place (granted, that place is the rafters of the garage...). We haven't called the diaper service, but they don't deliver the first load until one-week-out anyway. Really, I'm feeling so much more prepared and confident this time around just from having some experience, so all of these "little" things aren't really keeping me up nights.

What worries me is all of the other details of our life -- shopping, bills, schedules, homework, meals, classes... How are these things going to change when we add a new little one? I know from experience that I'll be exhausted, even more than I can possibly imagine, and that my mind will turn briefly to mush (seriously, I remember trying to read for a class 3 weeks post-Benjamin and spending two hours on 10 pages. Ouch!) I also know that all of the details will seem unimportant, and that we'll just make it work somehow. I just remember coming out a haze a few months after Benjamin was born, looking at a stack of papers that were never organized and bills that I forgot to pay, having to pull several all-nighters to finish school projects, and wondering when my life would feel organized again. Is it strange that I feel the need to hyper-organize now, and that the lack of a plan is my greatest source of stress??

My boy is being patient with me while I create endless lists in my head and insist that we discuss things to death (I'm sure he's thinking, "why does it matter if you start making frozen meals 2 weeks out or 3 weeks out??"... but it does!) He's also been understanding with my sudden need to pay bills right now or go to school immediately or plan our next three months to the day. I don't think anything can prepare me for the way my heart will expand on October 9th, or the way my head will hurt when I go back to school 10 days later, but I'm doing what I can to make the transition easy for all of us.

This wasn't supposed to be a post about my uncertain September; I had planned on sharing some pictures from our trip to CA. You can find most of our pictures and stories here (naturally), but I wanted to share some non-Benjamin ones as well: