I realized earlier this week that been working through my own “five stages” lately, or at least a modified version of them:

Denial
There was very, very strong denial at the beginning. Possibly because I thought we were on the same page, and so all this seemed to come out of left field, but soon the little hints began to add up and I began to suspect that there was something more to his off-hand “jokes” and comments.

Anger
Anger is perhaps a strong word for the emotion I felt, but my feelings were certainly far from happiness as my denial turned to disbelief. There was shock. There was displeasure. And I was definitely vexed. But as all of those wore off, I was mostly just confused. How did we get here? What had changed?

Bargaining
I’ll admit it. I tried to shape the conversations, and perhaps do a bit of convincing of my own, but it soon became clear that the decision was made in his head and that there was no bargaining to be had.

Depression
Again, depression is too strong of a term for my stint in this stage. Perhaps woefulness or glumness would cover it a bit more precisely, as I started to realize that this was a reality – I had given it a good fight, but the fight was taking too much out of me. I had to give in to avoid being consumed.

Acceptance
So, Yes, I have finally accepted that we are getting a mini-van.

Except, that last one isn’t totally true. I’m trying to accept it, I really am, but there’s a little part of me that feels like he will change his mind when the time comes. Now, if we actually had the mini-van I think I could accept it (it’d be hard not to, what with it sitting in our driveway and all), but until the moment that the keys are handed over, a small part of me will always hold out hope.

So I guess it’s not actually that melodramatic to say that a small part of me – that hope – will die when we get a minivan 😉

Two years ago, when I was about six months pregnant, we decided to build a fence. We had the fence holes dug and posts placed by professionals (at 6x6x12ish it was a smart move), but the rest of it was a DIYer (with Charles completing a bit more than me, given my issues with bending over too far … being six months pregnant and all).

It took three or four weeks, working weekends and evenings, but we’ve truly enjoyed our fence for the past two years, so it was definitely worth the sweat and blood (yes there was blood – I was briefly banned from using a hammer).

The pictures below don’t fully capture the work, and definitely do not capture the length of our fence. But they do show some of the fruits of our labour.

(There was also the new laminate floor that Charles installed in our basement when I was about eight months pregnant. That change, however, was not initiated by us but was in response to one of our cats taking offense to the carpet that had previously covered it.)

Surprisingly, this year we decided to continue the “Tracy pregnant = start home improvements!” trend by building Abby a swingset. But, not just something that could be thrown up in a matter of a few hours. Noooooo. Little did I know when I agreed that a swingset would be a good idea, that monkey bars were also part of the package. And if you have swings and monkey bars, you need something to bridge the two – and not just a slide platform, but a little fort. With climbing wall. And sandbox. And all of this comes in two tidy cardboard packages, delivered to your door.

The instructions said it would take two people eight to ten hours to build the playset. And although I’m kind of 1.5 people right now, since we do have Abby to contend with Charles was pretty much left on his own for this one while I entertained the small child. And waved from the window occasionally. I also helped hold some pieces at one point.

Again, the pictures below do not seem to truly capture the work. At least this time there was no blood.

I would say that it probably did get finished within the sixteen to twenty hours quoted in the instructions, and with the exception of the sandbox (as we need to buy sand and figure out how to cover it so that the neighbourhood cats don’t use it as a large litter box) it has received the approval of Abby.

Wheeeeeeee.

Abby made an interesting discovery under her little slide today. Reactions in our household varied.

Abby: “Ewww.”
Me: “Ugh, those are gross.”
Charles: “Cool.”

What is really scary is that they are just shells – which means that even bigger versions crawled out of them.

And are somewhere in our yard.