Room to Grow

34 weeks, with less than three weeks to go before we hit the baby jackpot, and Karen ceases to be a giant belly with legs.

Since we are so close to having the babies at home, we figured we better get our ducks in a row and get the boys' room put together. Anyone that knows me well knows I like to obsess about wall color, bedding, and any aspect of a room's decor, and this being a room I will most likely spend a lot of time rocking babies to sleep in, was no exception. So for weeks I tossed around a few decor ideas for their room. A beach theme? Nope, didn't feel right. Trucks? I am sure the boys will go through a truck/car things for several years, so I would rather wait until then. Sun/Moon/Stars theme? I hate light yellow, so this was out of the question. Frogs? Very cute, but I already have several rooms and the house painted a light green, so that won't work. A whale theme? I am a HUGE fan of the whale theme, but couldn't find anything that was whale-ish for babies rooms. (I guess there aren't that many expecting moms who have spent summers working aboard whale watch boats touting the wonders of the marine mammals? ) Then for a hot minute I thought I would do a safari theme. Seems appropriate, I'm from Africa, I like animals, Keith likes animals.. Most kids like animals, what's not to love? And, Keith and I just went to South Africa and we have some great pictures from our safari to include in the room. I actually tried to convince Keith that's Cole's middle name should be Sabie, after the Sabie River in SA where we saw a ton of wildlife. Keith did not agree with me that Sabie would be a cool middle name, he's so left-brained. But I'm getting off-subject, sooooo, anyways, in search of cute animal things for the room I went. My shopping trips were not as successful as I had hoped-all the crib bedding and decor for babies' rooms were so...well, baby-ish. Yes, I know, they're going to be babies. I get it, I just don't like the super foofy-frilly-nauseatingly pastel baby room stuff. I realize at some point I'll have no control over their rooms' decor, and when the time comes I will happily fill their room with Bob the Builder/Dinosaurs/Trucks/
Bugs/Whatever-They-Are-Obsessing-About-At-The-Time, but for now, I can be picky.

After listening to me lament about not finding the perfect bedding for the boys (and you know it HAS to be perfect, how else will the kids get into Harvard later?), MG offered to make the bedding. (For those of you who don't know MG, she is a lady I call Momma Gwen, a very dear friend of mine and Keith. MG was my supervisor at work when we met, and over the last 10 or so years she's become an adopted mom-person). I was thrilled! Custom bedding, all I had to do was find the perfect fabric. Flash forward a few weeks to a shopping trip when MG and I were going to pick the fabric. I should preface this by saying that prior to meeting MG at the fabric store, I went to Babies R Us to create a registry, and that experience left me drained and overwhelmed. That place is scary, seriously. Who knew there are that many types of bottles?

Anyway, I digress. MG and I met up, and we dove right into the fabrics. For some reason I expected to get to the store, and the perfect fabrics would just leap off the shelves into my arms. Didn't quite work out that way. There were SO many choices, tiny prints, big prints, floral, plaid, solid, phew. To say it was overwhelming would be an understatement. The rest of the trip is a bit fuzzy, but here's what I remember: MG found the perfect fabrics!, I stood paralyzed with indecision while clutching a bolt of fabric for the majority of our shopping trip, and MG had to steer me away from the pink/orange section a few times. Apparently I have a natural affinity for those colors and was secretly contemplating how I could include a cute pink & lime green paisley into the animal theme. Paisley is unisex, right?

Thanks to MG we got fantastic fabrics picked, and we have the bedding on the crib! It's perfect. The room doesn't exactly have the animal theme I initially had in mind, after all that searching I decided to keep it simple and just focus on a cute room with colors I liked. Here we are, our boys' room! Many, many thanks to MG for the bedding!