Here We Are!

Y'all: guess where I am right now, right this second.  If you said "France," good for you, Sherlock, since that is in the title of the blog.  I shall give you a hint: it's where the heart (and a plethora of unpacked boxes) is.  That's right, dears, I'm in my new apartment.  BOO-YAH.

AH and I actually managed to find this place back in mid-June, but France has taught me a thing or two about how easily crushable all my dreams are, and so I didn't want to jinx it by announcing anything until papers were signed, my clothes were hanging in the closet, and I had done a #2 in the toilet (that means they can't take it back now, right?).  But now here we are, out in the lovely suburb of Sceaux (because I finally managed to convince AH that a 40m studio in the city was not going to cut it; you can't keep babies in drawers indefinitely), and I'm hoping we can put our things into drawers, hang some art on the walls, and put down some roots for a little while.

I am clearly still in the honeymooning stage.  Right now, I don't mind the fact that it's a third floor walk-up; that's just keeping me in shape for labor, right? (And don't worry: there is a storage room on the first floor for strollers.  Otherwise, walk-up would have been a deal-breaker).  I'm even willing to overlook the fact that, in a moment of victory, on moving day I came into the bedroom, sat on the bed...and ended up in a pile of mattress and blankets on the floor.  Easily fixable, says AH!  Hey, it's motivation for us to buy a basic toolkit, which is something we should have anyway.  No harm, no foul. We're just spending a few nights sleeping on the mattress on the floor.  But really, that just brings me back to my college days when I slept on a mattress on the floor of room, my dirty clothes piled higher than my sleeping body mere inches away.  It's like I'm 21 again! (Minus all the typical trappings of a 21-year-old, obviously).

But seriously, I live in an apartment with rooms.  Rooms that have DOORS.  So, like, when people come to visit, we can pile all of our crap in our bedroom and no one needs to be any the wiser.  There's a little balcony that I'm just itching to put a little basil plant on.  And a real kitchen with an oven (baked mac and cheese!), and a washing machine (cloth diapers!), and, maybe my favorite part: a freezer.  Because that means that I, over-heated, pregnant person that I am, can keep ice cream within my chubby, bloated grasp.  And the baby will have her own room (Madeleine-themed, all AH's idea, I swear) with a real crib and curtains and books and little tiny baby dresses...it's true, the nesting has begun in earnest.  AH swears that he can see me obsessively gathering and arranging little twigs.  Seriously, y'all, I joined mother-fing Pinterest.  It's bad.

And the nesting shall continue, just as soon as we manage to evict the mass gathering of flies that have taken up residence in the nursery.  But hey!  It's all good!  I'M NOT HOMELESS ANYMORE!  Even if I do have a few unwelcome roommates right now (which will die a horrible, painful death, mark my words), I know I have a place to rest my head tonight, and hopefully every night for the remainder of our stay in France.  And by the weekend, when we purchase our new tool kit and AH goes all Ty-what's-his-face-home-improvement on our bed, my head will hopefully even be a few feet off the ground.