Getting Antsy

Recently I've gotten quite antsy about setting things up for the baby. I'm only halfway, but hey, I've known quite a few women who have had early babies (as early as 24 weeks) so I guess that's a part of my restlessness. The other part being that everyone says to do everything you can during your 2nd trimester since you'll be too tired and too big to do any of it in your 3rd trimester. The problem is this: there's nowhere to set anything up. We're still in limbo on moving...haven't been able to find anything suitable to our needs. It doesn't make sense to set up here if we will be moving anyway, but I really feel the need to make the baby's soon-to-be presence known in our house.

I've also been holding off on major purchases ever since my MIL chastised me for buying our own infant carseat/carrier and stroller, which is another setback to setting up. However, nobody has offered to make any of the bigger purchases, so I don't know why I'm waiting. Come to think of it, the topic of "When will your shower be?" came up on one of the June expecting boards and to be honest, I haven't heard a word about any sort of shower for me. I know that I would prefer to have it no closer than 6 weeks before my due date if anyone does throw one, but how can I tactfully put that out there without seeming like a gift-grubbing brat? What if we're expecting all this stuff we need to be purchased by others and nobody buys anything, there's no shower, no big to do, nada, nothing? I guess I'll be making a mad dash through Babies R Us in June hoping we can afford to buy all the essentials, but cursing the whole time about how much pain I'm in as I waddle down the aisles. The other problem with the whole shower thing is my father's side of the family who think it's really cool to wait until after the baby comes to have the shower. Yeah, that's great for the guests that you know for sure the gender and you get to meet the baby, but I personally think it sucks that you expect a new Mom to cart around her infant to a shower at a time when she's probably only getting 3 hrs of sleep a night, hasn't showered in a week, and is still in pain from her episiotomy. That also leaves you without the essentials when the baby comes, and makes it harder on the guests to come up with something to buy (I've been on the guest side of that one before)... It's so hard to plan when you have no idea what your needs will be. Yes, I have 20 more weeks (in a perfect world...we all know I could even be 2/3 of the way there at this point), but it doesn't seem to be enough time. And I hate not knowing what's going on... I'm a planner, it's just unnatural to me to not know what lies ahead. Am I making any sense? Or am I babbling idiot (or even a huge whiney brat)? I just would hate to shell out big bucks that we really can't afford to fork over if someone else is planning on making some of those purchases for us, but I can't very well ask around either. And yet, I want to start checking some things off of my to do list. (SIGH) The limitations of etiquette...