From my little sister, via email.
Dearest Friends and Family,
As you may know, G and I are about 3-6 weeks away from welcoming a new family member into our homes. We have had many offers to visit and help out and we appreciate that dearly; we will need all the help we can get! Also, I know many of you will want to just visit and see the new baby. G and I want to gently explain our needs so you understand. First, please understand our living situation; we live in a 2 bedroom, one bath home. Our home is also our office; we both work at home and currently work up to 40 hours a week and will need time away from guests to remain focused. Therefore, we will not be able to have visitors stay in our home for the first 3-6 months. However, we want each of you to feel welcome to visit Seattle and meet the new family member so we have created clear roles we are comfortable with for you to freely fit yourself into:
- Visitors
These guests should mostly be interested in visiting the new baby and family and will not do a bunch of house work for the us. Please stay in a local hotel you are comfortable with. We are happy to give you a few local suggestions or please check with expedia.com and stay near the %%%%% or %%%%% area code if you want to be close by our home or the downtown area. Our daily home visiting hours will be 12pm-5pm.
- House Guests
These guests should be visiting in the first 3 months and their main concern should be on maintaining the flow of our home as it was prior to baby chaos. For example meal planning, grocery shopping, meal preparation, laundry, cleaning, dishes, small office tasks for G, doggie walks, doggie feeding, cleaning up poop, running earns for G and baby and lastly there may be some baby time while mommy sleeps- feeding, diapering, soothing, etc. These guests will need to stay in our home, sleep in the guest room/office and commit to being available for a minimum of 3 days at a time. Please we can only have one house guest at a time; we may be able to accommodate for a husband/wife team if both members of the party are willing to be active helpers and we have time to create sleeping arrangements. We have many weeks open in May and June for these dear family members. We would like ample time to plan, so if you are interested, please contact M_ or G__ right away.
We sincerely look forward to seeing you and hold no judgment at all whether you choose to be a ?visitor? or a ?house guest?. If you are unable to visit at all we will look forward to seeing our Canadian Family in June at the wedding and our U.S. Family in September at the other wedding!
Lots of Love,
M_, G__ and new baby
Basic Needs of Mommy and Daddy while they learn how to parent:
? Meal planning
? grocery shopping
? meal preparation
? Laundry
? cleaning
? dishes
? General household organization
? Collect the mail, open it, set aside bills for M to pay, file invoices/paperwork
? Small office tasks for G_ like scanning, printing, filing
? Doggie stuff: daily walks, once a day feeding, clean up poop regularly, give lots of love- this may be hard on him
? Run earns for G_ and baby
? Calm baby while mommy sleeps- feeding, diapering, soothing, etc.
(Found this on the internet, sorry if it's already been posted somewhere, but omg I had to share!)