Our To Do List Before Baby #2

Thank you to Chase Freedom Unlimited for collaborating with me on this post! All opinions are my own.*

And thank you again for all your excitement surrounding baby #2! We are elated and excited and starting to prepare mentally and physically for life with these two lil boys.

As you can see from the photo above – ie Baby #2’s nursery – there’s a lot to do.

Fortunately, we feel a lot more ready this time around. First time parenting really is a doozy with not knowing what to expect. Henry was actually two weeks early and though we felt ready then, we quickly realized how NOT ready our lives and home were when we brought home this tiny newborn + me recovering from an unexpected c-section + having two dogs to care for at home. Having been in the hospital for two days meant 0 food in the house or energy to cook. That first week was a doozy. Dan was. our. hero.

Alas – this time we have a plan in place! We’ve already started making lists on what needs to get done and what we need on the home front in terms of help so it’s a smooth transition this time around.

So, it was perfect when a few months ago the folks from Chase Freedom Unlimited reached out about teaming up… having been a lifelong Chase customer for everything from checking and savings to business needs and even our auto loan and mortgage (yes, really!)… working together was a natural fit. I’m always thrilled to work with brands I regularly use and rely on.

 

They asked me if I was working on a goal that I could document and share in a series of posts over a few months, one that would require periodic purchases to complete. The short answer? YES!

See, Dan and I had just found out we were expecting Baby boy! And baby #2 means two under two, a return to late nights, and all during another long Chicago winter stuck inside. So, the goal for us is to get our home (and our lives!) organized and ready before the baby arrives!

Month by month we’ll tackle another item on our home to do list – from small things to big things – and I’ll share my Always Earning journey here as we get closer to our due date. We’ll be using our Chase Freedom Unlimited cash back credit card to help us with purchases along the way, which is amazing since we get 1.5% cash back (and new cardmembers get 3% cash back on all purchases on the first year up to $20,000.) Amaaazing. Every little bit helps and it’s always good to have your expenses work for you. (All purchases after that get 1.5% cash back.)

 

Baby Boy is due in late October. This means we have less than 3 months to complete the following to do list…

 

Our 2019 Goals to Complete Before Baby #2:

1. Add a stair runner – multiple people have slipped on our current hardwood floors and with Henry crawling and us up and down in the middle of the night carrying a newborn, we want to insure this is as safe as possible for everyone.

 

2. Hang window treatments in the living room for privacy at night – again, we’ll be up more in the middle of the night and right now our front living room is basically a fishbowl: with lights on it’s easy to see in. Need curtains stat.

 

3. Babyproof everything since we’ll have a toddler running around. We’ve done a bit of the basics but I want to make sure Henry is safe as can be if our attention is on baby #2 at any time. Need to add baby gate to our upstairs staircase.

 

4. Finalize the bassinet debate and order one… it has to fit in that narrow space between our bed and the wall shown above. So many of you have been asking what we’re going with and honestly I’m STILL not sure. Ahh. Why is this so hard? It really shouldn’t be.

 

5. Organizing Henry’s old clothes and infant toys for new baby boy. Any time Henry outgrew an article of clothing, I’d fold or roll it up, and add it to this growing pile in his closet. It started more organized in bins but clearly began to overflow and literally pile up. Now that we know we’re having another boy it’s time to pull all of this out and organize by size again!

 

6. Design the nursery and choose and install blackout window treatments. Our third bedroom/office is usually quite clear and organized but it became a hoarder space when we had Henry’s party a few weeks ago… and quite literally threw anything we needed out of the family room to clear up space in there. I have no idea where our desk is going to go – I don’t want to get rid of it because I love it – but this will become Baby boy’s nursery. It also has west facing windows that get blasted with afternoon and evening light – i.e. baby’s bedtime. So we really need to figure out a great blackout option for the two windows.

Stay tuned as Dan and I work through our list! The real deadline is to have this all done by the end of September. Baby isn’t due until the end of October, but Henry was two weeks early, and I have a feeling this lil’ dude will be early as well!