Hey! Posting a bit late today because Bret was working from home, so I co-opted some of his time and muscle to get the game of pre-baby musical chairs started around here. I know I've mentioned that we've got a lot of rearranging to do to make space for Number Two, and it all started with the "baby closet." That's the total disaster you see above, which held every item from Louisa's babyhood that we've been holding onto in anticipation of another bambino. Well, the closet doesn't look like that anymore.

This is just the start, but I moved most of the stuff that used to populate the office shelves into this closet. It's amazing how much you can cram in to a closet, isn't it? That stuff used to take up an entire wall in the office!

Meanwhile, closet clearing was just the beginning. The hallway is becoming our new office nook, so the desk needed to move out here as well. That's what we did this morning. Here she is:

That cleared the way for the office to start its transformation into nursery. Prepare to feast your eyes:

No, it doesn't stress me out at all to have the room look like this right now. But seriously, can you believe how one closet, nightmarish though it was, held all this stuff? Now it's an entire room-sized nightmare, and it's tough to call that "progress." But progress we shall call it, because we need to maintain our optimism! So, moving on --- can you tell in the first nursery "before" pic, above, that the dresser (which will double as changing table) is the previous kitchen island? To take its place, we moved the dresser that was holding socks and undies in the hallway (where the desk now is) into the kitchen.

Here's the thing: For like three glorious weeks, everything in this apartment had a home. I still had some perfecting to do, but there was a place for everything, and things were working well. Now, it's a whole different ballgame. Take this new dresser in the kitchen. On the one hand, it's several inches taller than the last dresser, which should make it more ideal for food prep. On the other hand, its height means that the back of it is visible above the couch....and it's not so pretty. It also doesn't have the same width, so we'll need to reconfigure the way we use the top to get use out of it. And we lost a bit of storage space because the baskets we slid under the last dresser don't fit under this one. Finally, I'll have to figure out another way to protect the couch from flying flour. All of these are surmountable challenges, and I've been dreaming about the new paint treatment this bad boy is going to get, and the small dishwasher that's going to take up residence beside it, but still: It's a project. In a SEA of projects.

Because I think all this is a tad confusing, shall we recap? The office/guest room is going to become the nursery/guest room. To accommodate the babe, we've moved the desk, craft and work gear into the back hallway to transform the "get ready hallway" into office nook. We took over two hall closets - mine and the baby closet - to hold the office gear. Meanwhile, we added two wardrobes to our room to recoup my lost closet space, and have been figuring out how to recover other lost storage. Since the baby has the previous kitchen dresser, the old hallway dresser is now in the kitchen, awaiting a makeover and some love.

I mean - it's not that complicated, right? I'm going to go fold some tiny jammies into drawers now, because that seems like the most satisfying and doable task of the current situation. There's so much happening and so much to share - I'm excited! And only a teeeeensy bit overwhelmed. See you Wednesday!