Pippa's Room

I finished Pippa's nursery a few days before she was born, but I never got a chance to post pictures. So I thought I'd do it now since my life is too hectic at the moment to do much of a real post.

This is how the nursery looked before:

World map on the wall, tan paint color, no valance, no style. It was our general purpose room--Big Daddy's closet, book case full of my travel mementos, extra boxes, ugly 2nd hand recliner, etc. So I had my work cut out for me, turning this into a girly nursery. I also didn't want to make it like Daphne's room, which is pink and green and yellow with flowers and butterflies. I wanted girly, but in a whole new way.

First came the beautiful bedding. It started with a swatch of fabric I saw online at a fancy (i.e. expensive) nursery design website. : It became the inspiration for Pippa's nursery. So I bought a few yards of that pricey fabric and then bought coordinating fabric from the local fabric store (i.e. WAY cheaper), handed it over to the capable hands of my seamstress mother, and this is how it turned out:

The birds and the polka dots became the theme of sorts for the rest of the decor.


Next I had Big Daddy print me a giant wall sticker. I got the idea for the tree from this picture I found online:
I made some changes and Big Daddy found some birds to put in the trees instead of the flowers.


Cute, huh? Pippa loves to stare up at the tree while she lies in bed.

By far the biggest project (for me, at least--the other big projects were done by everyone else!) was the alphabet wall. I saw the alphabet frames idea on a blog called Design Sponge. Hers looked like this:

So I spent a week or so collecting various sizes and shapes of frames from the local thrift stores.
I think I only spent bout $45 for all the frames! Then I took them all apart, ripped off the stands if they had them, cleaned the glass, and spray painted them. While they were drying, I measured the holes, found fonts online, and had Big Daddy print the inserts for me. Then I cut them down, put them in the frames, and laid them out on the floor so I could rearrange them 600 times. Finally, I put them on the wall. What do you think?


(Pippa absolutely LOVES to stare at the letters on the wall while I'm changing her diaper. The contrast of black and pale pink is so fascinating to her.)

Then I just had to add a few more touches. Once again, Mom came to the rescue and made a slip cover for the 2nd hand reclining rocker to match the trim on the bedding.


A lamp and some wall art finished it off. I still have one or two more things I want to add, but I felt good enough about the way things looked to put the baby in the nursery and not stress. I guess there were a few advantages to Pippa coming late.

This is the final product as it stands...

If I have a few spare hours over the summer, I may get the gumption up to paint the tan walls. The tan doesn't do anything for me. Maybe a pale blue? Or a soft yellow? Or maybe they'll end up staying tan because I'd rather be at the pool with my kids, working on MY tan. At any rate, there is a beautiful, one of a kind nursery where a modge-podge room used to be. Hooray!

At Some Point I'll Stop Blogging about Pregnancy/Baby Stuff, I Swear

What can I say? It's what's on my mind, it's what my life is about, it's what's taking up 90% of the time in my day. My baby. Sweet, wonderful, good little baby. But she doesn't leave me much time for much else. So what am I blogging about? You guessed it...

Top 10 Things I Am Loving About No Longer Being Pregnant:

10. Breathing. Oh that little thing! But when your entire diaphragm is squished to the top of your neck and your lungs have the capacity of a piece of paper, breathing is something you can no longer take for granted. But I'm happy to say that putting on socks no longer makes me winded.

9. Breathing through my nose. I get stuffed up about 2 months into pregnancy and I don't get to breathe through my nose again until a few weeks after delivery. So just about now, I'm able to stop wearing breathe-right strips every night and shooting as much Rhinocort Aqua as I'm allowed up my nose only to suffer from poor sleep and nose bleeds anyway. Hooray for breathing!

8. Bending over. Seriously, not being able to bend over sucks! First there is the fact that everything your children touch stays or lands in a space from your knees to your feet. You see their stuff there and you think, "If it was metal, and my hand was magnetic, I would clean it up. Really I would." And then you walk away and leave it there because, well, your hand isn't magnetic and bending over causes your pancreas to end up in your esophagus. Also, your children suddenly develop complete amnesia about how to put on socks and shoes. They want YOU to bend over and do it. I don't even tie my OWN shoes when pregnant. Ask me why I wore the same two pair of shoes my whole last 5 months of pregnancy: NO laces.

7. Medicine. You can actually take medicine again. Try having a cold and not being allowed to take any decongestants. TORTURE. Torture + a lot of snot.

6. Sleep! Oh glorious sleep! Not even the wakings of a newborn can make you feel bad about your sleep when suddenly your rib pain doesn't force you out of bed at 6am, your sleep apnea doesn't wake you up a dozen times (see # 9 above), there isn't a baby doing cartwheels in your belly from 10pm-1am, and you can actually roll on your stomach! Sometimes I want to make out with my mattress, I'm so happy to be face to face with it again!

5. Not puking. Although I only puked a couple of times this pregnancy from morning sickness, I was almost always 1 heave away from tossing my cookies. Every time I brushed my teeth or smelled something gross, I had to fight with all my will not to puke. It's so nice now to hork up a loogie without gagging.

4. Lack of pain. Ok, so this one has been intermittent. Throwing out my back, which turned into a horrible pinched nerve, the week after the baby wasn't fun. Neither was mastitis. Neither is the thrush I'm fighting because of the antibiotics to kill the mastitis. BUT it isn't non-stop rib pain, non-stop ligament pain, lower back pain, etc., all the time 24/7.

3. Ankles. Not the former cankles, but real ankles.

2. Proximity. Mostly to Big Daddy. It's one of the things I miss most all pregnancy long is no longer being able to get close to him. You can't spoon. You can't hug. You can't...you know...in any positions that don't leave you feeling rather whorish. Just being able to walk up, press against him, and lay my head on his chest is magical.

1. Definite #1 best thing about not being pregnant:

It's Time for a Pipdate!

I have had thousands of adoring fans (hers, naturally, not mine) request more pictures of Pippa, more details about Pippa, Pippa's social security number and fingerprint sample, so I thought I'd do an update on her. I'm all about pleasing my her fans. (Psst, Grandma and Grandpa, this is really for you. I don't actually have thousands of fans. Only many many hundreds. Ok, a few dozen. Alright, four. )

Pippa had her two week check up a few days ago. She did great. In fact, the pediatrician pronounced her "PERFECT." So, yeah, good work Mommy and Daddy. You created perfection!

She weighed in at a hefty 8 lbs 3 oz, a full half pound over her birth weight. (Hello? Can you say PORKER?!?) They usually want them back to their birth weight by then, so the weight gain was a nice surprise. Pippa's weight, in fact, is in the 60%! By far the fattest of my babies. Her height was in the 40%, which is 15% higher than my tallest child. Her head is in the 80%, about standard for my kids. What can I say? They have huge, brain-packed noggins!

Other tidbits about Pippa:

- Her name is the nickname for Phillipa, which is a Greek name meaning "lover of horses." We didn't name her Phillipa, though. Just Pippa.
- We got her name from a Robert Browning poem called "Pippa Passes."
- We are SO into Victorian poetry.
- Yeah, not really. We got it from excessive watching of the BBC's coverage of the royal wedding. DUH! (It's the name of Princess Kate's sister. )
- Pippa is my biggest baby.
- Pippa is my tallest baby.
- Pippa has white eyebrows, white eyelashes, and reddish-golden hair.
- Pippa is an extremely patient, mellow baby. She only screams when you take off her clothes or diaper. (I'd scream if someone were always taking off my clothes too.)
- Pippa smiled at only a week old. And just in case you think it was a fluke...or gas...she has smiled numerous times since. Mostly at me, of course. Or else tons of gas.
- Pippa is sleeping through the night. Mostly. She goes to bed about 11pm and sleeps until 5 or 6 am. Sometimes I have to wake her up to feed her because my boobs are going to explode. It makes me wonder how late she would sleep if I didn't wake her up. (But not enough to let my boobs explode to find out.)
- Daphne and Beck really like Pippa.
- Daphne likes to kiss Pippa on the head.
- Beck likes to growl at Pippa and shine flashlights in her eyes.
- (Hey, we all show our affection differently.)
- I am madly, passionately, unreservedly in love with this baby.
- Sometimes I want to eat her up.
- But then I realized that I just spent 9 months trying to get her OUT of my body, so I'd better let her remain unconsumed.
- See, once again, we all show our affection differently. Daphne? Kissing. Me? Cannibalism.

And here, by popular demand, are more pictures of Pippa. I just got some professional ones done this week, but I don't have them back yet. So mostly you're going to get ones where her eyes are half closed or she's staring off into space. Sorry, it's the best I could do while holding a camera and trying not to let her fall head first on the floor at the same time.