Before I had a baby, it seemed very important to have a nursery. I needed a room for the baby’s clothes and crib and a rocking chair and bookcases and toys and a changing table. A room dedicated to baby’s little life and little things. So we did the guest room shuffle (nice furniture to back bedroom, back bedroom furniture to third floor, third floor boxes to storage space, that’s what it’s all about) and turned the small front room into the baby’s nursery complete with a theme and matching furniture.

Then we brought the baby home and lost the second floor of our house. It just didn’t exist anymore, except for 15 minute blocks of time for a shower or maybe a quick nap in a real bed instead of on the couch. It was definitely too far to go every time my incredibly throw-uppy baby threw up and needed a new outfit. Add diaper changed to clothes changes and the nursery might just as well have been at the top of Mt. Everest. Only hours after getting home from the hospital we gave up all pretense of a nursery and turned our family room into baby central. E dragged the changing table down, we bought an extra diaper pail, a basket for baby clothes and we’ve never looked back.

Ok, I look back. All the time. I hate having that damn changing table in my family room, even if it does make my life easier. It’s big and disorganized and a constant reminder of how lazy I am. It also ruins all my good baby pictures.

Not to mention once the baby was mobile it was impossible to keep him away.

So right after Christmas I decided it was time to get my family room back. Baby Evan thrashes and squirms so much on the table I was changing him on the floor most of the time anyway. Plus we needed something to contain the explosion of baby toys that followed Christmas. I swear those things breed when I’m not looking. A couple of days in the basement, one new set of router bits, and a trip to Home Depot later and E had made my toy box dreams come true.

TADA! One husband made toy box, sturdy enough for climbing, painted with non-toxic VOC-free paint and built to prevent baby finger slamming.

My love of chalkboard paint goes on.

It’s big enough to hold all our toys and stuffed animals and whatever board books happen to be lying around at the moment with room for at least a few more. I can now un-baby the floor after bedtime in about 40 seconds, close the lid and not have to worry about tripping over a squeaky block on my way to the liquor cabinet refrigerator.

And that, my dears, is the story of how Mommy got her family room back.

While going through the toys and stuffed animals my mother had saved from my own childhood, I came across something that I think TOTALLY explains my current obsession with babywearing and baby carriers.

It's a baby backpack! For babies! To carry baby dolls!

So he wasn't as OMGSOEXCITED! about the backpack as I was, but he didn't mind posing for the pictures either. Hopefully in a couple months he'll actually like playing babywearing. Then his dolly can be handy any time he feels the need to pull her hair out with his teeth.

And here’s one more vintage photo of my aunt “wearing” me when I was a baby. It’s really a frame carrier, like the one I have in the guest room closet just in case we every decide to go hiking (AHAHAHAHAHAHA), but everyone in my family seemed to like it. My dad said he “wore” my brother all the time but I couldn’t find any pictures. That’s what happens when you’re the third child.

We were at Old Sturbridge Village. Bonnets were so hot right then.

Oh wait, I almost forgot this:

Overalls: Daddy's Baby carrier.

I got two awesome things in the mail on Wednesday both thanks to Twitter. For something I resisted so hard it sure has turned out to be awesome First, I got the swaddle set I somehow won for registering with bTrendie through a twitter friend’s tweet link (if you’re interested in joining, mention it in the comments and I’ll email you an invitation):

The hat is so sweet it's rotting my teeth. He's too old now to use the blanket as an actual swaddle but it's huge and soft and will make an excellent stroller cover.

Second, I got an absolutely gorgeous hand-made sweater. It was made by the friend of my lovely mommy blogger friend Mama Jade, who posted a picture of her adorable baby J wearing it on Twitter and offered it up for sale. It came in the mail today, and I am in L O V E.

How cute is that sweater!? It has a zipper up the back and it fits him perfectly.

Twitter FTW!

When I first found out I was pregnant I immediately went into list-making mode, creating Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, scribbles on the back of receipts, filling notebooks and day planners full of things to buy, things to do, things to attend. I searched Amazon for other people’s lists of baby gear must-haves. I read dozens of reviews and mommy blogs to find the BEST bouncy seat and the BEST swing and the BEST crib mattress and crossed stuff off my lists as I went.

But nowhere in the great interwebs or the parenting magazines or the advice books did anyone say this:

BUY A BETTER WASHING MACHINE.

Now, I realize some of you are going to curse me soundly for complaining about my old washer when you still have to haul all your clothes down to your building’s shared basement laundry – or worse, to the laundromat blocks away. Let me just say, I’ve been there too. But having My Very Own In-House Laundry was absolutely #1 on my list of Things To Do Before Getting Pregnant, followed by Have A Really Embarrassing Vegas Story and Drink A Beverage That Was Previously On Fire, so I feel like maybe I should have been more specific. Maybe my list should have said My Very Own Washing Machine That Actually, You Know, Launders, Spins and Doesn’t Leak Water All Over My Floor.

We bought the old washer four years ago when we suddenly found ourselves renting a house with hook-ups and the nearest laundromat twenty miles away. We paid $35 at a yard sale. I think we’ve definitely gotten our money’s worth out of that purchase, even including the $30 E spent replacing the water pump a couple months ago when we first considered buying a whole new machine. But there were so many other things to spend money on, cute things with teddy bears or little sailboats or smiling monkeys on them, why throw out something that was still working?

On Sunday, the machine stopped draining, and yet somehow still managed to leak a couple inches of water into the tray we had very wisely placed underneath. I decided it was time to send my $35 washer off to the Big Appliance Shop in the Sky. A quick trip to Bernie’s and one medium sized dent in our savings account later, the new machine was on it’s way. They delivered it Tuesday morning (and took the old one away, thank God). And now…WOW. Never in my life have I been this excited to do laundry. I washed every dirty article of clothing, bedding, towel and pillow in the house. And everything is so CLEAN. CLEAN AND NOT SMELLY! Not only is the machine (a GE Profile, for the record) super energy efficient (estimated yearly operating cost: $22), the dryer takes half as long as it used to now that the clothes go in with most of the water already spun out. And did I mention the CLEANING? Tuesday morning there was a really terrible stealth poopsplosion that resulted in yellow baby crap smeared across several articles of clothing and what I thought was a permanent stain on the changing pad cover. But my new washer was all “I GOT THIS” and the poop is GONE. It never occurred to me that the old washer was such a piece of crap it was actually failing to clean stuff and a new machine would improve my life this much. I feel like I’ve just discovered cheese or chocolate or yoga pants. Other magic features: a digital time remaining display, two presoak settings, and no agitator post in the middle – which means I can fit a whole comforter in the drum. Do you understand now why I’ve written an entire post about a washing machine?!

Now if only I could get E to agree to buy the matching dryer too…