Ah, the Pressure of a Nursery (True Story...)

I like to create and design. I take great pride in coming up with unique ways of decorating our home. It works really well, in fact. I dream up and explain, the A-Man implements. He is a bit of a perfectionist and it comes out better when he does the building. My stuff doesn’t come out bad, just a bit faster and maybe with a bit more… character.

We’ve lived in our current home for almost 3 years now and there has been a room reserved for future baby Blackford. I didn’t block it off or anything. It’s certainly been used for guests and storage, however, the time has finally come when I get to play with it and create a beautiful baby nursery for our little girl to be. I’m in my element…

Kind of. This shit is harder than I expected. Pardon the language, but that’s how it feels. This room could end up shaping this little girl’s future! Am I putting a little too much importance on this deal? I know, it’s my first kid. Probably my only one. As much as I hate to admit it, there is that first-time mother thing going on inside of me. I know it doesn’t have to be perfect, yet, I just really want it to be something cool. Surely, I can't be the only mom-to-be that's fretted over something like this?

Then, of course, what happens if we do end up having a second kid? The one you just get the $25 crib off of E-bay and call it done because you know they're going to bite it and pee in it and you're already crazy busy running after the first perfect kid. How do I explain that the first one got all the goods and they just have to have an expanded capacity for imagining? And really, it doesn't mean that I love them any less...

The A-Man wants me to create a theme. I don’t know… animals, flowers, trees, pink? Isn’t that a theme? Of course, I hit up Pinterest and Google to get some inspiration. This can be good thing and a bad thing. I start to get a little idea here and there that starts to come together, and then I realize that my so-called theme has just expanded twenty-fold, which is going to drive the A-Man absolutely insane when I try to start cobbling it together in a worded-format picture for him. He needs drawings, visuals and such.

Well, at least I have some colors picked out. Lilac and silver. Sounds cool. Then I start looking at crib bedding sets in purples. For some reason, they all look overly gaudy to me. The pink ones are subtler and cute. Ok, so I add pink to the mix. And white. Maybe some teal. I do like orange, too. Hmmm… stripes? Too much?

I surf on over to the Restoration Hardware kid’s area. I always love their stuff, especially since they have pictures of rooms put together. I see beautiful ideas, I mean, these rooms are gorgeous! I'd sleep in one of these rooms. But let's face it, they're a little bit stuffy for a kid; particularly a baby. I can just imagine spending the type of moolah their stuff costs and my precious baby pukes all over it, bites it, pulls it off the wall, maybe creates some poop art of her own on it. I've had plenty of moms warn me of that. Then do I freak out because they just ruined thousands of dollars of decor? You know, like babies are supposed to do? I know I’m not doing floor length drapes. I can just see the bad things that can happen from that. Pretty is a factor, yes, AND it should also be fun, and touchable, and playful. If disaster happens in it, so be it!

In the end, as long as there is something safe to sleep on and some toys that are easily accessible, I’m sure this kid will be happy. I grew up with the mis-matched furniture, whatever paint the house was painted when we moved in, and torn out pictures from magazines taped to the walls. I liked it enough. I did have pink blinds. That was cool. You could tell my room from the outside of our house. Sometimes my room was super clean, other times, I rearranged my furniture so that I could swing on to my bed from the door so that I could avoid the growing piles on the floor. My magazine posters were able to survive such disasters.

So after all this looking and hemming and hawing, I’ve finally settled on unicorns and fireflies. Oh yes, and bunnies and koala’s. My Aussie friends have already gifted me with quite a few of those. And the knitted hedgehog my friend from South Africa gave me. There is also this really cool dragon kite I got from my buddies in Singapore. And I saw these cool paper flowers that I liked. And maybe a tree on the wall. And the A-Man really did like that blanket with the owl on it.

Yeah, I’ve totally got this.