Happy Holidays!

Hope you had a peaceful holiday break. Thao had a week off, and we got into the holiday spirit by opening a bunch of gifts – that we bought for new baby Emma. For the past few months we’ve been receiving lots of packages from our baby registry, many that we ordered and many from friends and family. We squirreled them away in the closet until last week, when T announced it was time to start opening things and finding a place for them. So we pulled out all the boxes and began unpackaging.

Thao did a particularly clever thing surrounding a buy buy baby promotion that gifted you a $100 credit to your account if you spent at least $300 on products. We called and asked what would happen if you returned the items, and we were told that balances in your credit account would be removed, but if you used the balance first, then they couldn’t penalize us. So she went on a bit of a shopping spree and loaded up on items, and soon we had $600 in credits. Then we used that $600 towards things that we needed, including several things we’d already purchased.

After making all our purchases we returned a bunch of extra things we’d purchased to get the credit. We were at the store for an hour as they went through each item, but eventually got it all done. Our returns added up to nearly a thousand dollars – so we spent around a 800 dollars to get an additional $600!

We went through a significant kitchen reshuffling. It began by designating a cabinet for the baby bottles and gear, and then finding another spot for that cabinet’s previous stuff, and then ended up here:

Thao bought a bunch of these white bins from ikea and we’ve now got most of our things in bins in the cabinets, making them a bit easier to slide in and out to get.

We opened all of the baby blankets, burp cloths, onesies, swaddles, and the clothes we’d received and threw them in the wash; we had enough to fill up a whole basket. Seeing this little sock made everything feel a bit realer.

Then Thao folded all the clothes and put them into these bins we found at the container store.

The bins go into the changing table we bought from ikea, you can see it on the left. I’m putting together the ikea crib we got.

Kalbi likes chewing on the cardboard, but I don’t let him. Sorry bud.

Our bedroom now has baby glider, a baby changing station with drawers for her clothes, a crib, and new drawers for additional baby stuff. We’re pretty much all set up! The room feels pretty cozy now. We’re looking forward to not sleeping in here. Bring on the new year!