Nursery is Complete!

It feels great to have the nursery complete.  My house may not be perfectly clean, but my nursery is ready, so it makes part of me feel complete.  Sometimes I just go and sit in the nursery because it's the cleanest, neatest, and happiest room in my house.  I know it won't be neat once James arrives, so I'm enjoying it now, before blankets and burp cloths are everywhere and poop is on the chaining pad.  Right now, all the diapers are clean and smell good and the blankets are strategically placed over the crib and folded in the closet.  I do not think that this will be the case when the little man arrives and real life begins.

I was all over the place when trying to decide on a theme for the nursery.  I knew that I wanted to do something that was gender neutral because I did not want to redo everything if we ever have a girl one day.  I played around with the idea of green and yellow assuming that those were the only two colors I could use if I wanted to go gender neutral.  I knew that I did not want to use red or orange, so I was stuck on green and yellow.  I was not sold out on either, so I kept looking.  Finally, I decided on turquoise.  I've always liked the color and I think that it's gender neutral.  Ray wanted to do a dinosaur themed nursery, but I think that dinosaurs are very boyish.  Now Ray was fine with that because he tells me that he's incapable of producing girls (Ha... We'll have to see about that).  I decided that I would go with giraffes instead.  So - I have a turquoise and giraffe theme going on in the nursery.  It's not exactly what I had envisioned when I started out, but I like it.

Here's the view from the door with the blinds open-

And with the blinds closed -

The chair that my parent's got me - it rocks and swivels.  My friend Kaitlin made the blanket that's on the rocker -

A view of the crib and the incredibly large giraffe that my dad brought back from the zoo.  I think that this child is going to be spoiled by his grandparents!

The changing table - where I am sure I (and Ray) will be spending tons of time.  Notice that I got the brown changing pad and then a sheet saver on top of that.  Now I just need something to protect myself from the peepee - O that's right - I have my peepee teepee that my aunt Kim bought me!  I'm ready to do this diaper thing! 

And I'm not just ready to do the diaper thing, I'm actually going to try to do the cloth diaper thing.  My plan is to start with prefolds and use a combination of prefolds and disposables at the beginning.  I was given a lot of disposable diapers (for which I am VERY thankful) and I plan to use them.  When I run out of disposables though, my plan is to try the cloth.  I have quite a few friends who do cloth and love it, so I'm going to lean on them for advice and wisdom.  Look how cute these covers are for the prefold diapers!

 They may not be as cute when we have huge blowouts in them, but I still think that they're pretty nice.  My favorites are the owls.  I could not find any giraffe covers :(

James's bookshelf -  I love this bookshelf.  Ray and I got it this summer at Ikea and it's very sturdy.  The turquoise boxes have toys, blankets, and other random things stored in them.  Now I just need some more good books

Up close picture of the gigantic giraffe.  He's standing on the toy chest that we got from Ikea.  The giraffe is very real looking and is a little scary.  He has the ability to look at you no matter where you are in the room... it's like he follows you around with those huge eyes.  Hopefully James will grow up loving giraffes rather than fearing them. 

I was reflecting back on something I learned years ago in college as a psychology major.  Many kids learn their first animals by what is around them.  Some kids learn "dog" as their first word for an animal because dogs live in their houses.  Then, when those kids are driving down the road and they see a horse or a cow in a pasture, they identify it as a "dog" because it's an animal and has 4 legs.  My poor child is going to call everything a giraffe and people are going to think that he came from Africa. 

The mobile that grandma Kathryn got for James -

I love the little shoes!  I can't believe that his feet are so tiny!  His feet don't feel very tiny when he's kicking me in my ribs. 

The blanket that Kaitlin made (which I love).  She also made a matching hat and mittens, but they are already packed in the hospital bag. 

Cute giraffe blankets -

And more cute blankets -

And I leave you with one last look at my gigantic giraffe.  He watches me as I walk past the nursery all the time.  I can't wait for James to get here so that he has someone to watch over :)

  A huge thanks to everyone who made my nursery possible!  I love it and I hope James loves it too :)