I have taken my 40 Days to heart, and I have to say, I am making progress.

Of course, I am not going to tell you about my project to improve my self image. “Today I walked by the mirror and said, ‘Hey baby, nice bum! Woot wooot!’” Ummmm, I don’t think so. You’re just going to have to trust me on that one. But I will update you on my other project — all the things we are doing to get ready for the adoption (which at this point we are convinced will never happen).

I can say right off the bat that BDH has taken this to heart. You’d think it was his 40 Days around here, he has been so busy! But it has been good for me, too, since it keeps me doing things. I had set out with the intention of doing one thing per day to prepare for the adoption, and so as we get through the days, we get through the tasks.

Monday I started by bagging up a bunch of our old clothes to donate to the Diabetes Association. How does that help prepare for the adoption, you ask? Well, for starters, a lot of them used to be stored in the closet in the baby’s room, so that frees up some space in there. But also, for the last few weeks/months they’ve been sitting in piles on my bedroom floor, waiting for a pickup day, and so getting them out of there frees up some room. And one thing I am trying to do is to make room in the master bedroom so that I have a place to put a rocking chair for rocking the little one, or if need be, to relocate the crib for the first little while.

And on Tuesday, I made a concerted effort to find the fire escape plan template, with the intention of actually sitting down and doing the fire escape plan this week. After watching me searching around a bit, BDH informed me that he has it — so I will leave that to him.

And last night… we finally started putting together the baby furniture! Now this is HUGE for us. You have to understand, we bought the furniture years ago when I was pregnant. When I miscarried, we just couldn’t bear to go in that room for a while, because seeing the furniture sitting in there waiting for — well, nobody — just made us unbearably sad. But then after awhile, we pushed the sad feelings aside, and we just made that room a storage room. It seemed easier than thinking of it as the baby’s room, anyway. And so the furniture stayed stacked up against the walls, obscured by other bags and boxes and items.

We had cleaned out a lot of the stored stuff in the last little while, but still hadn’t gotten to assembling the furniture. But then last night, we tackled the crib. Despite the fact that BDH had a helper who wasn’t so helpful because of her back, we managed to get the crib assembled. And now it’s sitting in there, waiting for a mattress, bedding, and Mystery Baby.

And today, we got a lot of stuff thrown out with the garbage — specifically, what are called “clear bag” items here in our garbage collection system. These are things that are not recyclable (like in normal recycling systems) or compostable. So that means, items we’ve been holding on to in that storage room. I stood at the window this morning and watched — I was doubtful that the garbage man would take 4 or more bags of these things! — and when he did finally take them all I did a little happy dance! There are still many bags to go, and two weeks from now on the next “clear bag” day I’ll be watching and hoping again, but it’s a start.

So it’s been a good first week so far! I have to admit that I’m feeling fairly positive about my whole 40 Days experience so far. I like the feeling of accomplishment, and I like feeling good about myself.

Here’s hoping we can continue on!