Today I built shelves. A few days ago I was ripping out carpeting. It seems that my pregnancy nesting process as I enter the third trimester entails a whole lot more power tools, hammers and trips to Lowes than it does adorably tiny baby clothes. I mean, I've got a pile or three of teensy onesies, and a handful of a few large bags full of slightly larger adorable clothing for this child that just need to be re-folded and sorted by size. Its not like I'm immune to the charm of the tiny clothing.

But man, the siren call of shelving! As a child I always thought the "a place for everything and everything in its place" motto was laughable. Increasingly, I like the idea. Especially as I embrace the lifestyle changes that I hope and expect this child to bring with it: fewer long days in town, fewer days in town at all, more time on the homestead, more homebaked bread; I find myself less and less tolerant of the general malaise of spreading stuff that two adults –packrats at that!- living in a too-large house are prone to create.

It’s all a metaphor, really. Symbolic. The renovation and interior design work that preoccupies my mind of late is a way of making physical the spiritual and emotional and energetic process of this pregnancy. Of making space for baby. Of dreaming forth the mom I want to be, the woman I want to be. As I embrace this shift, I realize more and more just how much I've told certain dreams to wait, just how many aspects of myself I've tucked away for later. And their time is now. The baby's time is now. And baby deserves a space to live in that will nurture baby's growth, that will nurture baby's parents so that, as parents, we can do our best by baby.

And so my nesting process entails skill saws and screws as well as shuttles and yarn. It means undertaking renovations both major and minor to create functioning systems in this home of ours.