Double Happiness

Change is good - Part One (the beds)

If change is good, then we had a REALLY GOOD weekend!

I never had a pretty bedroom when I was growing up so it's always been important for me to give this to my kids.  So far, the girls don't really have a preference about any of the decorations but I'm sure that'll change -- and probably soon!

When Michael was little, I think we redid his room every two or three years.  My favorite was the red/black Chicago Bulls theme even though the life size cardboard cutout of Michael Jordan would always catch me by surprise and scare the hell out of me when I went into his room in the middle of the night.   Something about a great big guy standing over your kid's bed that you never really get used to. 

Michael had a trundle bed when he was growing up.  He loved it for two reasons.  As you probably guessed, he enjoyed having friends come over and spend the night but the real reason he liked his bed was because the trundle underneath took up so much space that there obviously wasn't room for monsters to live under there.  At least not big ones.  

We still have his trundle bed but don't use it because we got it in 1989 and it wasn't even new back then.  I have no idea how old those two mattresses are but I'm guessing at least 30 years old and I once read that dust mite poop causes a mattress to double in weight every ten years.  That's a tremendous amount of poop!  I mean POUNDS of mite poop!  But even if that's an exaggeration, even a few ounces of poop would be disgusting enough that I won't let anyone use the mattresses.  The Poop Bed (as we call it) is just made up as "decoration" in Gwen's room.  Well, until this last weekend... 

I guess I just assumed the girls would always have a trundle bed too but when they outgrew their toddler bed, it made more sense to use our two spare beds instead of going out and buying two more.  It wasn't an easy decision (which is probably why we waited to long to get them out of their toddler beds) because our spare beds are huge: a Queen and a Full!

The "before" photo of their room is <here> and their new rooms are below.

Maddy's 'new' bed is queen size.  The last two mornings, I've gone into her room and almost been unable to find her in it because she's so very tiny and disappears in the folds of her "Shabby Chic" quilt and sheets.  The bed takes up just about the entire room but that's okay because she only sleeps in there and does all of her playing in the playroom.   When we have money to blow, we'll replace this beast with a pretty daybed/trundle and a matching vanity.  Something more suiting a Princess (not a Queen).

  Gwen's 'new' bed is a bit smaller (full size) and she looks pretty comfortable in it. At first, I thought it would be temporary (like Maddy's) but now I'm thinking it fits the room nicely and there's no reason she can't keep it for the rest of her childhood.   The headboard is actually the front part of her old crib.  I like how it looks with the frog mural on the wall.  I'm going to sew a cute little canopy out of some fabric that I have that matches the froggy wallpaper border.   I've never gotten tired of this room (our original nursery) and I hope Gwen will want to keep this forever.  At the very least, I'm praying her first choice of room makeover isn't a Jonas Bros theme!

Part Two of our Big Weekend of Change involved moving the office out of the playroom and turning that ENTIRE space over the kids.  The new office is now in the junk room that used to hold all of our junk plus our two spare beds (stacked on top of one another).   It looks like a tornado ripped through the house right now so it'll be a day or two before I can post "after" photos of that.  Thankfully, our computers are moved and we have internet - phew!  :)

The Nursery: From Baby to Preschooler & (hopefully) Beyond!

When we created the nursery back in early 2005, we hoped that it would be a room our little girl loved for many years to come.  Well, it's been many years and, thankfully, she still loves it.  And I think I love it even more.

We designed the room with the thought in mind that we would eventually have two daughters who would always want to share a room but when Maddy came home a year after Gwen, she immediately let us know that she preferred her own space (see her room, below).  I still hold to the hope that she'll want to move back into the Fancy Frog room again someday.  

 

With so many of my most precious Bloggerville friends anticipating a referral soon and putting the finishing touches on their baby's nursery, I ached to share ours one more time.   

After all these years, the froggy nursery is still the one place in our beautiful house that I feel the most serene and at peace.   If you've followed our journey long enough, you know how long we struggled to bring a baby into this room so you know why this room will always mean so much to me.  I sit in there each night with Gwen and we snuggle in the sage green slip-covered La-z-boy rocker/recliner and talk about her day and those minutes are so special to me.  I also love the time I spend snuggling with Maddy on her big furry white rug but I know that my children's rooms belong to them and not to me and I can only hope quietly that they'll never want to change them and replace the murals I painted and all the other loving details with cheesy stick-ons of the Jonas Brothers or Hannah Montana.  Oh how I'd miss that precious froggy border!

For more about the details about the rooms, click the link below.