the nursery

The Nursery

When I hadn't heard from the shipping company about the coop, which was to have arrived today, I got a little worried. Hank volunteered to call them up and sort it out and he texted me about an hour later with the news that there had apparently been a screw-up but that they were sending it out today--express! It will arrive by Thursday. For sure, this time.

We've decided to keep the brooder in the house for the first couple weeks, in the living room, actually. And by brooder I mean, of course, a large cardboard box, outfitted with a quadruple layer of paper towels, a fluffy bed of pine shavings, a feeder and waterer and--most importantly--a snazzy metal light fixture mounted on an even snazzier red pvc lamp stand and fitted with a snazziest of all infrared lightbulb. Saarinen this is not. But we need all of this because the babies need to be kept at approximately 95 degrees for the first week. Thus, the thermometer where the babies will soon make their home. 

The box also needs to be elevated if it is to stay in the living room (dog issue). So this morning before I went off to the office I suggested to Hank that he bring up from the basement the kiddie table we use during the winter to keep our rosemary, bay and Meyer lemon plants in front of the south-facing living room window. So it was that a little while after the text exchange we had about the coop, he texted to tell me this: "Nursery now set on the little table" This, of course, is why I love my husband. 

But he is exactly right. As I set it up last night, spreading the paper towels, fluffing the pine shavings, adjusting the lamp just so...I had the exact sensation I remembered from 16 years ago when, hugely pregnant, I set up Max's nursery for the first time. And everyone knows that process is called nesting.