Life Under Construction

To everyone using real live Christmas trees, especially ones you cut yourself, sometimes Momma Praying Mantises--Manti?--lay their eggs in pine trees in the fall to hibernate over winter and hatch in spring, or in late January if the tree and nest has been at a constant 72 degrees for 8 weeks.  I know this....from experience.  I only tell you that to tell you this.  Our Christmas tree has been down for two weeks now, the decorations are put away, and the house is no longer looking bare, but just normal.  But we can't have that, now can we?

Just when our life starts to calm down, we have to do something to mix it up.  This time, we're re-doing rooms.  Rooms...plural...as in two. 

Today, Troy began the demo on the upstairs bathroom.  We are going to redo everything except the cabinets which will just get a coat of paint.  New floors, new shower, new sink and counter top, new fixtures.  And all of this is especially challenging because the home's builder either didn't understand the concept of using standard measurements on anything or choose to be different by ignoring standard measurements.   

A few years ago, there was a commercial of a guy standing in his kitchen, flipping a switch trying to turn on the garbage disposal.  Flick....flick.....flick.....nothing happened.  Two houses away, a man sat in his car as the garage door went up and down, up and down as if it had a mind of its own.  That could have been us.  Nothing in this house is intuitive, which just presents Troy with more fun challenges as he discovers one idiosyncrasy after another.

Admittedly, my project, the nursery, is not too terribly big.  I'm not even doing a lot at this time because my sister is coming to Indiana in March (our deadline for the bathroom remodel, too), and I thought we'd work on this together.  I've got lots of ideas and am collecting things, but there will be no painting or hanging of curtains or artwork until March.  Unless we have to get it done sooner because of an impending arrival of a baby.

I've heard a lot of hopeful adoptive parents say that the sight of an empty nursery is just a constant reminder of the emptiness in their lives, and  I understand how that can be and will admit that there may be days when that is what I think as I pass by the empty room decorated for a baby we don't know and may not know for a long time.  But I also think it is a sign of hope. That someday, there will be a pitched wail of hunger coming from that room or coos and giggles of delight.  That we look forward to realizing our dream of a complete family and in the end, we have an unwavering faith that it will happen even if we don't know when.

So, while my project is easier (no tearing anything down), it is all that more daunting.  Adoption makes this project even more complicated.  We don't know the gender of our child.  And even once we get matched, we don't want to commit to a gender specific theme since 50% of matches fail and we don't know if our second match would be for a child of the same gender.  So neutral it is.  Except that my idea of neutral (sage green and butter yellow) are not Troy's.  Somehow over the last decade, yellow has become decidedly feminine, and while he is on board with an all-green room, I am not.  But the walls can't remain the boring, characterless white that they are now.  I need to see that some thought has been put into preparing the room.  And so, we came to a decision....gray walls.

Yes, I am afraid it will be a little bit dull for a baby, which is why we need to punch up the walls with splashes of color.  And since the bedding and theme is teddy bears in that nice sage green that I planned for the walls, I've decided that some of my own personal photography will grace the walls:


Bearlington





Bearlington



Passepartout



Furmont

 I can't wait to see the stretched canvas art from these photos that will hang over the crib and bracket the window. 

Now, it's a race.  Let's see which room will be finished first!