Building the Nest: My Top 10 "Spring Trends"

I found a great blog this past week via another really fantastic blog--I'm guessing that's the way it works these days; the sheer amount of blog networking I've discovered in the past few weeks is like drinking from the fire hose--good Lord. So many great voices with great ideas. Anyway, over at Mama's Losing It, she posts five writing prompts each week and bloggers follow suit and post by Thursday. I like the idea of a prompt. Here's the one I chose for this week:

5.) List your top 10 “Spring Trends”. (inspired by Tricia from Desperately Seeking Silence)

Oh, man. Am I ever at the forefront of fashionable trends this year. This prompt struck me as both silly and doable. Coincidentally, these are traits I find so endearing in my husband! Badumdum. Sigh. I used to be funny. I really did.

So, here's my top 10 list of "Spring Trends" for 2010:

1. An ever-expanding waistline. My measurements this week: 34.5/40/36.5. The trend this Spring: Being thankful that I had such an abundance of wide-waisted elastic yoga pants and shorts already in my possession; and even more thankful that, remarkably, my hips and flat butt have remained mostly unchanged by my reproductive expansion.
2. Jewelry: less is necessary. My hands swell to proportions both numbing and a little on the painful side. In a stroke of sheer luck yesterday morning, I was able to pry both my engagement ring from my left hand and my now-fifteen-year-old promise ring from the right. The wedding band remains as a stalwart reminder of just who got me into this mess.
3. Burt's Bees Natural Acne Solutions Purifying Gel Cleanser. Because pregnancy has pretty much been a second adolescence. I will say, in combination with another product, Devita's High Performance AHA, my skin has improved vastly in the last month.
4. Aura Cacia's Aromatherapy Body Cream with 100% pure lavender essential oil. After bath time at night. It really, really helps me find a sweet spot in the 'nest' I build around myself in order to sleep. Speaking of 'the nest':
5. Three pillows of exquisite quality. Because I'm worth it. Late on any given Spring evening, you will find me nestled between the three pillows I assemble around myself at bed time: a memory foam pillow under my head, a queen-sized pillow behind me to support my lower back, and a down-y king-sized pillow to support left-side sleeping--between my knees and under my belly. The upside of this construction project: I am able to successfully avoid further strain on my lower back. The downside: I am also able to successfully avoid any and all physical contact with my husband.
6. New underwear. Agreed, not the most sexy of underwear ever designed. But I'll be damned if it isn't the most comfortable. And I did buy some really hot, sheer, lacy boy-cut panties to make up for the austere functionality of the bras. Also: they will hold pads in place nicely for however long I'll have to wear pads...whether for post-birth bleeding or incontinence issues. So damn sexy.
7. BASEBALL. Always in style for Spring. Tickets to the Tampa Bay Rays' season opener and season tickets to the local minor league team. DH and his friends are a little too excited to have a designated driver, though.
8. Cookbooks. My MIL gave me Julia Child's The Way to Cook (upon my request--she thinks I'm a fantastic cook, as she's pretty darn terrible. We all have different aptitudes...) for my birthday, as well as The New Food Lover's Companion and Child's Julia's Kitchen Wisdom. The plan is to begin cooking and freezing meals, so my wonderful DH, who inherited his mother's kitchen aptitude, will have no excuse to order pizza more than once a week while we settle in with the newborn.
9. A new appreciation for the basics. Like, my feet. And my lungs. Nothing makes getting from Point A to Point B more difficult than when one's lung capacity has been compromised, and nothing makes it more miserable than one's aching feet. This Spring, my piggies will have a fresh coat of paint at least once a month applied by a professional, and nightly massages in the tub. I mentioned Aveda's Foot Relief some time ago--truly, the only peppermint I enjoy is the peppermint essential oil in foot cream. This stuff is another nightly ritual. Spendy, but it was sooo worth it.
10. Tapping into the resources; online, community-wide, and literary; that will help me be as balanced, fulfilled, informed and sane a wife and mother as I can possibly be. I stand at the threshold of one of the biggest changes of my entire life, with consequences that now far outreach my own and that of my husband's. It's a little hard to be "prepared," but I feel pretty assured that I will have the wherewithal to find answers; or, if no answers are to be found, I'll know where I can air my grievances and find support. That's almost as important. Maybe more.