Ever stared at a room in your house after you’ve moved all the furniture and clutter out? It looks a lot bigger than you thought. A lot bigger. We currently have one completely empty and two almost-empty rooms. There’s a couple more things to move out tomorrow, then the bed gets moved Wednesday morning when we get up. Wednesday all the floors will be redone and then it will be living in our basement until the weekend when we’ll be able to move furniture back in.

Den asks me, “Will you be okay with staying here? Or do you have to go to a hotel?” I’m pretty sure he was talking about the vapors from the floor refinishing (though of course I won’t be home while they’re being done). No, my question was, How long will we have to stay off the floors completely? Because dude, if I do not have access to the bathroom for an evening then I am outta here. (No, we don’t have a bathroom downstairs yet. Yes, it is sad.) We will find out from the floor guy on Wednesday what I will have to do.

But hey, one of the local hotels has free wifi. I won’t suffer.

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We also moved the dog crates to the basement, where they will likely stay. We have *finally* (after 6 years of owning the shepherd) gotten to a point where we can leave them both loose in the bedroom when we’re not home and nothing will be destroyed. Well, our bedding is all messed up, but we’ll come home to two dogs just snoozing. For a dog who had severe separation anxiety when we first got him (and would attack furniture frantically whenever we left the room, much less the house) this is really magical. And oh my god how much extra space we have in the bedroom without two giant crates in here!

Unfortunately with the crates went the dog beds. You know what that means? I have a german shepherd stretched out between DH and I, who routinely (and very innocently, I presume) stretches, kicking me. The other dog is on my other side. I feel like I’m stuck in a straight jacket in my own bed. And yes, it’s a king size. That doesn’t really seem to help much when you have a DH and two dogs.

The dog beds will becoming back in when the floors are done.

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Suddenly, just like that, I am at peace with her name. Actually, I think I love it. It was the name we had agreed on early on in the pregnancy, before we knew for sure she was a girl. After all the worry and upset, it just feels right. All the anxiety and confusion that was swirling around has settled.

I look back at the last month and observed to my best friend that I’m pretty sure the entire freak-out was misdirected anxiety and emotional distress caused by Devin’s birthday. How else do you explain why I was literally hysterically bawling about the name decision 3 days before his birthday, and then very nearly at peace with it the day after? I was very calm about his birthday. Only the day before his birthday did I start crying at all about it, about him not being here – and it was just a sad few tears.

And my best friend basically said – in much nicer words, of course – “Well duh.”