Doing it our way!

We were told to not start setting up a nursery until after you get a child home. That it would be too disappointing to walk by a nursery everyday without a child in it. For awhile I went along with this mentality, but then I started to think for myself.

I knew that I didn't want to paint a nursery with a new born sleeping in it. I knew without a doubt that we were going to be painting the room way before we had our baby. I figured there was no harm in that. The kicker is that we won't know boy or girl so we had to choose a gender neutral color. So I searched pinterest like crazy for "unisex nursery". The unisex nurseries all still looked very one sex though. Call me crazy but pink dots didn't scream boy or girl baby. Now maybe if we were some of those new fangled anti-gender parents, (I just read a crazy article about how one couple didn't tell ANYONE what the gender of their child was until it turned 5 and started school...kinda creepy) but we aren't. So we just decided on a tan color. I figured I could accessorize as needed with tan walls. Then I ran across this picture and fell in love.

The wall color was exactly what I was thinking and I could easily make the wall hangings with my cricut! So Travis and I stopped by Lowes on Friday night and bought some paint and started painting the room. Now three years ago, when the idea of children wasn't really even in our heads, I decided that I wanted to paint the bedroom a nice bright blue. Wonderful color, but hard to paint tan over. Plus anyone who has ever painted with me, mostly my mother, can share with you fabulous stories of how I like to step in the paint tray and lean against wet walls. So needless to say, it's always an adventure when you paint with me, and it's not like I accidental ran the paint roller over one of the electrical outlets and ended up blowing a fuse throughout the whole room or anything....

BEFORE

AFTER

Alright, so the room is painted, except for some minor touch ups along the baseboards and ceiling. Then Travis and I start talking about the whole waiting until you have the child to set up the room so you aren't disappointed. Well, I can tell you a thing or two about disappointment. I can tell you about spending 24 months in a row hoping that you are pregnant only to find out you aren't. I can tell you about how on the 25th month you find out you are pregnant, only to find out 3 months later that you aren't anymore. I can tell you all about disappointment. But I can also tell you about hope. I can tell you about realizing that God has much bigger and different plans for you then you ever thought possible. I can tell you about knowing that you are on the path where your child is finally going to be brought to you. I can tell you about breathing a sigh of relief when you realize that you are not ever going to have to get fat, deal with morning sickness, rip open by squeezing a small watermelon out of your body, have heartburn, and every other FABULOUS ailment that comes with being pregnant, but that you are still going to get to have your baby. I understand disappointments, but I also now understand that with those disappointments come hope.

We decided that it would actually be a lot easier to set up a nursery now when we don't have a specific child in mind while setting it up. I think that I would be more disappointed if we started setting up a nursery after being matched with a mother. Then we would be setting up the nursery for THAT child and if we didn't end up bringing THAT child home, we would be disappointed. But just setting up the nursery now is just us setting up a nursery for our child that WILL be joining us in the future. It might not be the first placement, it might not be the second placement, but it will happen. Our child will be coming home one day, and I don't want to have to worry about setting up the room after we already have the baby home. I want to just spend that whole time loving on the child. (People are probably going to have to sedate me to get a chance to hold the little one... just warning you all.) So I think we are going to go ahead and get started on setting up the room. I think of it as my "nesting" phase, but I still wouldn't expect me to start cleaning anytime soon.

And just an update on where we are in the home study process, we will have our final home visit with the social worker on March 5th and then we should be cleared to be shown to birth mothers! This meets my March 10th deadline, our original due date, that I had set for us, so that makes me very pleased. As always we cannot thank everyone enough for the support that we have received the last 2 3/4 years. One question we were asked during the home study was what the support was like from our family and friends and I literally laughed, because there was no way I could put into words how supportive everyone has been. I cannot wait for our child to experience all the love that already surrounds it.