What a Life!

I’m deep into preparations for new baby. I kind of held off doing much of anything until we had the ultrasound and found out (hopefully) if we were having a boy or a girl. If we were having a boy, I had a couple things that I thought I might knit, but most of my preparations would have revolved around getting everything back out and ready to go. But since we’re having a girl, those simple plans have been turned upside down.

The other day I went through all of our baby clothes (as you see above), sorting out what was gender netural, what I might sell, and what would be donated. Now instead of having two totes and two drawers of clothes-in-waiting, I only have one of each. The single drawer (granted, a big drawer) contains Ben’s clothes waiting for Joey. The tote will contain items of the opposite season waiting to be sold.

We have not been so lucky as to have hand-me-downs for Ben to wear. Thus I have become quite resourceful at finding clothes that are nice but not expensive. Most of his clothes every season I buy used, a dollar or two a piece for shirts, up to five dollars a pair for jeans. I buy (or we are given as gifts) a couple new outfits which the boys wear only when we go to town. [Yes, at our house, we get dressed up to go to town.] Otherwise, they just wear second-hand clothes around the house, which is nice because I don’t have to worry so much about their getting stained or torn, which inevitably happens.

Unfortunately, since we haven’t received hand-me-downs, we don’t pass them on either. When we are finished with clothes, if they are fit to be resold, I sell them and use the funds to buy “new” second-hand clothes. If they are not fit to be resold, no one I know would want them so I just donate them.

With Ben, we didn’t know if we were having a boy or girl so I have a sufficient supply of 0-3 month sized clothes for the new babe. Since she is expected in September, by the time she is ready for the next size (which was about 6 weeks with Ben and 8 with Joey), it will be time for cool season clothes, so there is no buying anything for her now. I have a good stash of cool-season clothes to turn in when the time comes, and then I will shop for both Ben and baby.

As for knitting for baby girl, can I just say I have a dozen projects in my queue for which I already have yarn and pattern, and many others which I would love to add but will probably not have time for. Again, knitting stuff sized up to 6 months is a pretty safe bet, but judging at the different pace at which my boys grew (Ben ahead of schedule and Joey behind), some of those projects may have to wait until I know which size to knit. Regardless, my needles will be flying for the next few months.

And then there is the bedroom. Our house only has two bedrooms upstairs, and with small children, I’m not going to sleep at the opposite end of the house. Thus the three of them will be sharing a room. The bedrooms are generously sized, and the bunk beds, the crib, and two dressers fit comfortably with room to spare. Had we found out we were expecting a boy, this would have been easy. Joey would have moved to the bottom bunk, Ben to the top, and new baby would have occupied the crib as it is.

But I will only be having one girl, and she will not be wearing boys clothes or sleeping on blue crib sheets. Granted, the decoration scheme I came up with originally was blue and yellow with plaid and subtle flowers (shown above in a picture I took of the crib after we moved the mattress over to the toddler bed for Ben before Joey was born). It’s worked well for the boys, but the fabric the former owners put up as wallpaper on the wall has half been torn down by my boys (it was hung with starch), so it’s time to move on to a new decor anyway.

I went shopping for fabric, thinking that I could find something floral to go with the navy, red, green and yellow that the quilts for the boys will be. But after an afternoon of shopping, I concluded that if the colors are primary (as in the quilts I made, shown above in progress), they are boy colors. If the colors are pastel, they are girl colors. So no luck on finding something girly that would go with what I already have for the boys.

At this point, my theory is that I will paint the walls a nice beige (keeping the white woodwork trim around the middle) and that will look nice with the boys quilts on one side of the room as well as whatever I pick for the girl side of the room.

Quite frankly, I prefer primary colors to pastels. I did find one bolt of floral fabric that I thought would have worked well for the crib skirt. But I want to make her a quilt as well, and I had no idea what I would come up with that would not look completely un-coordinated with the crib skirt. Granted, Joey’s quilt (shown on the chair above) doesn’t exactly coordinate with the crib skirt, but at least the blue and yellow is quite visible in it, so it works. I want new baby’s quilt to have at least one side of the soft plush fabrics that Joey’s quilt is made with. But those fabrics seem to be dominated with pastels – I don’t remember seeing any in primary colors.

So I am kind of banging my head against the wall at the moment. Steve is anxious to get the painting done. I want to finish the sweaters I started for the boys before I start into baby knitting. Today I did look at paint swatches and found what I thought would be the perfect color to complement the boys’ quilts as well as potential girly colors. But then I got worried about how my perfect color looks against our golden/orange natural wood floors. When I put the paint swatch on the floor, it doesn’t look pretty. (The floors look dark in all of the pictures in this post, but they are essentially the same color as the closet door next to the crib.) So do I ignore the floor or pick another color? That is the question.

And that, my friends, is where you find me here on a Sunday evening past my usual bedtime. Tomorrow is another day. One never knows what solutions might magically appear…