Where progress meets change
It's been long overdue, the updating of the boys' rooms.
Trey's walls still baby blue, and his bed fashioned from pieces of the Target-clearance toddler bed he graduated to when Aden stole his crib. The screw that held the footboard to one side of the bed fell out every week or so, leaving one mostly-stripped screw to try and hold the bottom of the rickety frame together. A low-dollar nightstand whose, um, wood had years ago split from repeated climbing incidents, now wobbling side to side. An even lower-dollar dresser whose drawers fell apart regularly and whose top simply rested unattached.
Aden's walls still nursery green, and the monstrous seventies poster bed we inherited from my great-uncle having been used about ninety-nine times too many as a fire pole or tree or periscope or rappelling rope or insert boy activity here. No screws to tighten in this ancient giant, so climbing in always came with a shimmy and jumping in with a sway. Toys everywhere, over half unplayed with for several seasons.
Y'all, Toy Story 3 has forever altered my worldview. My heart goes out to those guys stuffed in the back of the closet or lost in the abyss behind the bed. I grieve with them for boys tall and strong who once held them close.
Sigh.
So paint and furniture were on this year's improvement list, hopefully near enough to the top that none of the furniture would just collapse in the wee hours and scare us all to death.
My sweet Mama and her spiritual gift of painting came and made my greige dreams come true, after working herself to death to patch holes and move everything to room-center and clean the unseen areas I can never seem to get to. My sweet Dad patched the ginormous holes in Trey's walls that had been expertly bandaged with packing tape, leaving now no trace of the violence that overtook the poor sheet rock over time.
The color is perfect, warm and neutral and sometimes-grey, sometimes-beige as promised. This from a girl who had this whole house done up like a box of crayons fifteen years ago. My age is showing. Or maybe it's just my HGTV.
Then came the furniture. Metal beds, y'all. My growing-up bed was metal, and it's just classic. Had to go this route for the boys. Goals were: good quality but inexpensive, similar but not matching, and nothing noth ing for Aden to swing off of. Birchlane, who has been behind most of the house changes over the last six months, kindly sent me a coupon right when they had a nice bed sale, so I was able to get both highly-rated bronze beds for more than half-off.
Of course we had to put them together, no big deal. I did one all by myself while Christian-girl cursing whatever Allen guy is behind the Allen wrench. Come on, man. Some of us do actually have real tools, you know.
The beds are gorgeous, solid, and have freed up space from their oversized predecessors.
I scoured the interweb for a really good, non-orangey real wood dresser and nightstand for Trey. Birchlane of course had a few I liked, and that decision was put over the top when I found one of those sets at a local furniture market for much, much less.
They were delivered and filled up. Spent a couple hours whispering sweet nothings to my stash of Command strips, hanging back up some of what had been taken down. Organized til my fingers ached. Packed boxes of toys to donate, taking time to lovingly caress each one and explain to them all that their lonely desolation would soon come to an end.
Stepped into that spot of the hallway where I can see both rooms at once, and stopped breathing.
These are, like, grown up rooms.
What on earth have I done?
Yes, they are beautiful and no longer rickety and, for the moment, well organized. But y'all, my babies! I can still walk in each room and picture it as it was when I laid their warm, squishy, sleeping bodies in their crib and changed their teeny tiny tushies on the changing table. No trace remains, and I'm wondering how long that mental image will hang on.
No, I don't want that phase back. Just sometimes it's still hard to let go of.
Meantime, their rooms really are beautiful. And completely changed. It's progress.
In related news, while Dad was in fix-it mode, he took a look at our confounded ceiling fan light fixture. And how exhilarated we were to pull in the driveway that night to our room glowing like it hasn't in years upon years.
Who knows whether this is really true or not, but sweet Poppop had the chivalrousness to tell me that we hadn't done anything wrong in installing the fan, just one of the wires had come loose. I'm choosing to believe it, y'all.
Sometimes change can be good thing.
Trey's walls still baby blue, and his bed fashioned from pieces of the Target-clearance toddler bed he graduated to when Aden stole his crib. The screw that held the footboard to one side of the bed fell out every week or so, leaving one mostly-stripped screw to try and hold the bottom of the rickety frame together. A low-dollar nightstand whose, um, wood had years ago split from repeated climbing incidents, now wobbling side to side. An even lower-dollar dresser whose drawers fell apart regularly and whose top simply rested unattached.
Aden's walls still nursery green, and the monstrous seventies poster bed we inherited from my great-uncle having been used about ninety-nine times too many as a fire pole or tree or periscope or rappelling rope or insert boy activity here. No screws to tighten in this ancient giant, so climbing in always came with a shimmy and jumping in with a sway. Toys everywhere, over half unplayed with for several seasons.
Y'all, Toy Story 3 has forever altered my worldview. My heart goes out to those guys stuffed in the back of the closet or lost in the abyss behind the bed. I grieve with them for boys tall and strong who once held them close.
Sigh.
So paint and furniture were on this year's improvement list, hopefully near enough to the top that none of the furniture would just collapse in the wee hours and scare us all to death.
My sweet Mama and her spiritual gift of painting came and made my greige dreams come true, after working herself to death to patch holes and move everything to room-center and clean the unseen areas I can never seem to get to. My sweet Dad patched the ginormous holes in Trey's walls that had been expertly bandaged with packing tape, leaving now no trace of the violence that overtook the poor sheet rock over time.
The color is perfect, warm and neutral and sometimes-grey, sometimes-beige as promised. This from a girl who had this whole house done up like a box of crayons fifteen years ago. My age is showing. Or maybe it's just my HGTV.
Then came the furniture. Metal beds, y'all. My growing-up bed was metal, and it's just classic. Had to go this route for the boys. Goals were: good quality but inexpensive, similar but not matching, and nothing noth ing for Aden to swing off of. Birchlane, who has been behind most of the house changes over the last six months, kindly sent me a coupon right when they had a nice bed sale, so I was able to get both highly-rated bronze beds for more than half-off.
Of course we had to put them together, no big deal. I did one all by myself while Christian-girl cursing whatever Allen guy is behind the Allen wrench. Come on, man. Some of us do actually have real tools, you know.
The beds are gorgeous, solid, and have freed up space from their oversized predecessors.
I scoured the interweb for a really good, non-orangey real wood dresser and nightstand for Trey. Birchlane of course had a few I liked, and that decision was put over the top when I found one of those sets at a local furniture market for much, much less.
They were delivered and filled up. Spent a couple hours whispering sweet nothings to my stash of Command strips, hanging back up some of what had been taken down. Organized til my fingers ached. Packed boxes of toys to donate, taking time to lovingly caress each one and explain to them all that their lonely desolation would soon come to an end.
Stepped into that spot of the hallway where I can see both rooms at once, and stopped breathing.
These are, like, grown up rooms.
What on earth have I done?
Yes, they are beautiful and no longer rickety and, for the moment, well organized. But y'all, my babies! I can still walk in each room and picture it as it was when I laid their warm, squishy, sleeping bodies in their crib and changed their teeny tiny tushies on the changing table. No trace remains, and I'm wondering how long that mental image will hang on.
No, I don't want that phase back. Just sometimes it's still hard to let go of.
Meantime, their rooms really are beautiful. And completely changed. It's progress.
In related news, while Dad was in fix-it mode, he took a look at our confounded ceiling fan light fixture. And how exhilarated we were to pull in the driveway that night to our room glowing like it hasn't in years upon years.
Who knows whether this is really true or not, but sweet Poppop had the chivalrousness to tell me that we hadn't done anything wrong in installing the fan, just one of the wires had come loose. I'm choosing to believe it, y'all.
Sometimes change can be good thing.
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