Jay Paul’s Room

He’s only eight months old! Would y’all like to see Jay Paul’s nursery now? I never did get that ottoman…once Jeremiah acquiesced, I had looked at so MANY ottoman’s that I had too clear an idea of what I wanted. Does anybody else have that problem? You are looking for one item in particular, but after spending countless hours looking at every option that could ever exist, taking bits and pieces from all over the internet, and falling in love with one element while despising others, you suddenly realize that you’ve created a hybrid item that doesn’t exist in actuality. SO, I found somebody who could make an ottoman here in town (and do it pretty cheap!), then I found a fabric sample that was pretty close to ideal. Sadly, somewhere in the midst of that long process I got too lazy to take everything to completion. As little man is now more of a little monkey, we had to lower the crib for his safety (and the safety of the pictures hanging above his crib). It pushed me to finally photograph the room…even without the silly ottoman.

Welcome!

First the two most used areas of the room.  Jay Paul’s crib:

And the chair where we rock and nurse and nurse and rock.  I’ve done a fair amount of reading in this chair as well.  Can anybody spy Lord of the Rings?  I’d never read it, and it seemed like a fitting tale to tackle with a little boy in my arms.

We call this the barn wall.  It really is made from old barn wood, and I had the carpenters overlap the boards instead of butting them up against each other so that it would look like an exterior wall.  I wanted to bring the barn inside.

Now some close-ups of the crib.  I knew I wanted bold patterns, but I didn’t want it to look too grown up.  In general, I tend towards soft colors and solid fabrics, but to me, one of the wonderful things about a nursery is that you don’t have to worry about it staying in style for years to come.  A baby can only stay in a crib a little over a year, so why not embrace the trend!? I love the texture on the grey chevron stripe…

But I thought that pairing it with an egg-dot and woodland creatures brought the whimsy level up a notch.

Hanging artwork was a challenge in the room.  With the pitch of the ceiling and this double border of molding (Jeremiah was ok with making a barn wall here in the house we’re renting, but he felt like it would be too much to rip a row of molding down???) there isn’t a whole lot of actual wall space.  All those over-size prints in nurseries that are so popular right now, were not going to fit up in here.  So, I made a clothesline out of rope and ordered these cute clothespins off Etsy.

This guy is my favorite.  We’ve had lots of talks while I patted Baybus to sleep.  I’ve named him Clyde, if y’all were wondering.

Can you tell which one has been Jay Paul’s favorite?  Woops on waiting too long to lower the crib!  If you’d like to order some prints for yourself, I bought the 5×7 prints matted to 8×10 from Mehmert’s website.

The fact that there were no closets, meant I had to buy a piece of furniture to hang up baby clothes, darn ;)!  But what seriously was frustrating was finding a piece that was the right height with those charming slanted ceilings.  This one came from Highlands Antique mall.

I love this corner.  Chock full of memories and items from some new friends and some old.  Those were Jeremiah’s first pair of chaps as a little boy.

A silver rattle Jeremiah’s grandmother gave as a gift and who a sweet friend then gifted to us so that one of ours would have a gift from Grandmother Maddox.  The booties Pace and Mary Aplin wore when they were christened.

The silver spoons that each baby received as a gift from different friends and family.

The booties Mom gave Pace to wear home from the hospital.  Mom loved the tatting because it reminded her of her great-grandmother (who used to tat–can you use that as a verb?-herself).  They are beautiful…but the most impractical things ever.  Now, I love the memory of how hard we laughed at Pace’s newborn baby toes poking out of all those holes!

And then the plate that Mama B gave Jay Paul on the night we announced to our family we were having a little boy.  She still has the pink one that we didn’t end up needing.

Lastly…the cradle.  The most thoughtful thing my sweet husband has ever done for me.  I poke fun at him on this blog sometimes–about making me wait for silly ottomans and reigning in my spending on frivolous cribs–but truly, he knows how to love me so well… …

We were in Antique Attic looking for a bed for us, and we passed this crib that I had eyed MANY a time.  I had never mentioned it to Jeremiah because it was, AHEM, out of any sort of budget range for the nursery, and we were having enough trouble trying to decide on a bed for us–which we desperately needed.  It made my heart glad when he thought it was as beautiful as I did, and any (hormonal, pregnant) woman could get giddy watching their husband admire the craftmanship of a baby cradle.  Gently swinging it with his finger, in awe of how substantial it felt and how effortlessly it rocked.  It was a nice moment, but I thought that was all it would ever be.

Fast forward two months, to me having 2 bouts of false labor 5 weeks before Jay Paul’s due date.  The nursery is nothing but a pile of boxes and fabric, the crib is not assembled because we have lost the screws, the pack-and-play smells like rotten fish from some unexplained event that occurred during years of storage, and Mary Aplin has busted the ever-living bottom out of the (very cheap and highly unstable) cradle we owned.  If you ever wanted to see me crazy, you should have dropped by our house the morning after I’d had consecutive contractions all night long that were hard enough to wake me up from dead sleep, in a house that had nowhere to put the baby that I just knew was about to enter the wide world.

I curled up in Jeremiah’s lap when he woke up the next morning (let’s be honest, I was HUGE, so there was very little curling and much more plopping) and sobbed about my panic over the lack-of-baby-bed situation.

“I want you to get dressed and go buy cradle bedding,” he told me very matter-of-factly.  “I will handle the bed.”

Now, I knew the man had surgeries all morning, and I was a little incredulous.  I thought he was going to buy a new piece of plywood to try and repair the busted bottom of the cradle, but I wasn’t sure when he thought he was going to squeeze that in, and I was still having those painful contractions.

“Just trust me,” he said.

“You understand that I feel pretty certain that if I don’t have this baby today, I will at least be having him this week?” I asked.  Loving him but knowing his tendency towards extreme procrastination.

“I understand.  You just go buy some sheets and trust me.”

I was out all morning looking for simple bedding, for a cradle I didn’t have, and a nightgown for the hospital, because I didn’t have one of those yet either.  Mrs. Ohs was in town and I was dragging her around with me in a panic-stricken funk.  We got home around lunch and when I walked in the back door and into the great room, my eyes were immediately drawn up to the landing and the lights on in the nursery… …I gasped and clapped my hand over my mouth.  Mrs. Ohs asked me over and over what was wrong, and if my water had just broken?!  I couldn’t make a sound.  The most beautiful cradle I had ever seen was standing slap in the middle of my nursery.  Did Jeremiah really do that?!!  How had he even remembered that cradle?!  Could it really be mine??!!

He didn’t just come to my rescue, he lavished me with love.

And my sweet grandma added this English netting, so that our new family heirloom would be graced by her hand.

The end.  I love this space…almost as much as the blue-eyed butterbean who lives in it.