Our Nursery

Someone asked me recently for some pictures of our baby nursery. This post is mainly to satisfy their curiosity. I'm afraid our nursery doesn't have much of a theme. We had two rocking chairs that were going in the room -- one is yellow with lady bugs and fireflies the other is a cream color with hammocks and palm trees. No, they don't really go together unless you're thinking Summer. However, considering the difficulties finding what I like over here, I wasn't going through the trouble of reupholstering. Plus, I figure they're only in there on a temporary basis, so I was going to work around what I have.

That being said, we decided to go with bright colors and settled on yellow and blue. Plus they seemed neutral enough for which ever gender baby we had. I know blue is typically associated with boys, but I don't think this combination would damage a little girl psyche too drastically. My sister found this darling Paddington Bear set on Ebay, which we ordered, and we also ordered a cute yellow bumblebee set as our backup. Both of them are really adorable, but Ben and I were excited about Paddington. Shortly after returning from the States (about two days after, actually) Ben and I went to London. I made him walk all the way to Paddington Station just so I could buy a Paddington bear there.


This is the valance in Button's room. I mentioned earlier how difficult it is to find what you're looking for here. Let me emphasize this to you. As much as I love living here, it is nigh on impossible to find things that we are used to being able to locate with ease back in the States. A good example of this is the curtain rod. I could not find a thing in the Navy Exchange. My friend ended up finding one at the local market and we compromised by spray painting it white.

After spending a great deal of time reading through the Consumer Best Buy reports, I finally found the furniture I wanted to buy for Button's room. Originally I was going to buy it in an espresso color. The crib is one of the ones that converts to a toddler bed and later to a twin/full size bed. Seeing how well the darker wood did in my nephews' room I thought this would be a good choice. However, I couldn't find the crib in the same color as the dresser or couldn't get them both from the same place or ... well, you get the idea. All our walls in our house here are white. Not wanting to have to paint everything back when we leave, we have decided to leave them white. As such, I finally went with the white furniture. I figured it would blend with the walls and make everything look a bit bigger. That was my theory at least.

Here's where the story gets really fun. We ordered book shelves for Button's room. That was back in May. They were supposed to be coming into the Navy Exchange. It has now been four months and the book shelves are still no where to be found. I was thinking I might actually see them before baby arrived, but that was silly of me. The crib and the dresser we ordered online, but they would not ship to this address. Another day I will bore you with my sentiments on businesses who will not ship to FPO addresses. In the interim, we had the furniture shipped to my Dad's house and he agreed to forward it onto us.

My father was able to break the dresser down into small enough packages that the US postal service would mail it over here. One part came within a week or so, the second part floated around the ocean for about an extra month. No, I'm not exaggerating. (BTW, notice the painting on top of the changing table. It's my contribution to Button's room and you may see it again in my County Fair entry. Wish I knew how to do one of those cool link things so it would take you to my sister's County Fair site.)

The crib was another story. No matter how much he tried, he could not get it to the right size or weight limit to be accepted by the postal system. It was quite the quandary. Dad actually suggested sending the baby back to the States and they would raise him until he no longer needed a crib. One idea, I suppose, but not my favorite option. Out of desperation, I asked one of our base leaders one day what they would do. They asked where the crib was coming from and so I told them. Now here's a blessing from God. As it turned out, there was a squadron coming over here from our home state and the base is only about an hour from my parents' house. They drove the crib down to the base, offloaded it to the very nice gentlemen there and it was flown here to my husband and I. It actually arrived before the dresser did!

Ben was so excited when it came in that he actually took the afternoon off work just to put the crib together. I think it was the first moment that he realized we were going to have a baby. I was excited to put out the comforter and make up Button's bed. Our cat was sure we had put this bed together just for her, so we have since rewashed all the sheets, remade the bed and taken to closing the door. Above the crib we hung the blanket that Grandma Rickert made for our first baby. Again, not much of a running theme, but more than anything, I wanted it to be a room that felt cozy.

As we are adding our finishing touches, and still waiting for book shelves, Ben and I picked out a pack-n-play for Button's first few weeks.

Don't let these seemingly easy things fool you ... these things are complicated to put together!! Of course, this could just be a first time parent thing as we are still flummoxed by the car seat base. Would it be wrong to just duct tape our child into the car every time we have to go somewhere?