Room
Though we’ve barely accepted it, Arthur has moved.
It was a short move, approximately six feet down the upstairs hallway. The carpet is from the same roll. The commute to the bathroom is a little further, but he’s managing.
He spent the last roughly seven and a half years in what our species calls the nursery. I assume we call it a nursery because it’s where you nurse the baby, but Arthur spent zero of his nursing days or nights in that room. Instead, he stretched and wiggled and coo’d and slept in either a bassinet beside our bed, on a blanket on the living room floor, in a plastic chair that rocked slightly to and fro, or in our arms. The Preemie Experience, in 2016, dictated that we keep him as close to me as possible, night and day, for breathing regulation or something that sounded simultaneously crucial but also cloudy through sleep deprivation fog. Who’s to say.
He also never nursed in the nursery, or in any of those other aforementioned places. Unless you consider nursing in a non-traditional, in through the out door, have you tried making it harder sort of direction. If you do, then we nailed it. He was taught to drink from a bottle within hours of birth in the NICU and, like any sensible human who has successfully learned to do something with ease, he lost interest in trying to make another way work. But the New Mom to Rainbow Baby Who Likely Won’t Have Another One Manual was chock full of perseverance through absurd measures. (So I exclusively pumped, tracked every drop of milk produced, drove myself insane with data, tried to get him to latch and breastfeed from every possible position we could contort our bodies into, cried a bit every time that wouldn’t work but not really cry just almost cry because the baby might pick up on the angst, then accept the consolation prize that at least I could bottle-feed him in the plastic rocking chair while also pumping to save about 14 minutes which I could then spend washing pump parts *and* bottle parts so we could blink and do it all again in about 76 minutes.) Someone should’ve told that woman that six years later those milk ducts would have the final say with a breast cancer diagnosis. The irony, right?
The nursery had evolved. From this hypothetical space we’d enjoy one day when the preemie scare subsided, to a wonderland of books, to monster truck ramps, to toddler rails, to a twin bed. From travel themed pictures on the wall to crepe paper baseballs hanging from the ceiling, to hundreds of glow in the dark stars on the ceiling and walls, to more shelving, bigger blankets, bigger socks in the drawer, longer books, bigger schedules, everything…bigger.
The room was feeling the tug of past and future. The beautiful crocheted hot air balloon mobile from England that once dangled above a baby’s head in the crib now hung over his feet in the twin bed. The stars on the wall looked a little awkward around the world map mural with pandas and monkeys and winding between sports streamers. The shelves and under the bed overflowed with baseball-related trinkets, monster trucks, sticker books, and things in ebb and flow of interest. But it was working. At no point did Arthur express any desire to move or change a thing.
Until he did.
But not affirmatively. A murmur here and there. “Maybe I can move into the room down the hall would that be good?” Like his mom, he thinks in run-on-sentences and is unsure of how he might make a request of the world.
“Sure,” I said, contemplative, a nudge of emotion swelling over the thought of something ending.
But my post-cancer powers kicked in, reminding me that the joy is just around the corner with something new beginning.
So I dove in with plans of the when, the how, the whats. Winter break. I’d paint the walls. I’d buy some new stuff for the walls. It would be baseball-centric. We’d move the little desk from the living room up to his room and the larger bookshelf in the basement might be able to consolidate all the book baskets to one location. All decisions were Arthur-approved.
We had just finished up a fall baseball season and a dad on the team is a photographer. He went out of his way during one of the games to take dozens of pictures of every single player. For Arthur, he got a ton of him pitching. They are incredible and really get at our boy’s heart in the sport. I chose a favorite and found a company that will turn it into a watercolor print. Then I got prints and frames of some of the runners-up and made the watercolor the central piece.
Note the NYC lamp, a purchase for the OG nursery. The dresser is also from the nursery, purchased in Orange, VA about three miles from where we were married.
I added a few surprises, the best of which being the MLB logo neon sign. It pops with the wall color and it dims and everything. So fun!
We are keeping a little notebook together. It’s sporadic so far, but when one of us writes the other it’s major cute.
Granny helped out with procuring some things that could double as Christmas presents - one of which being the beanbag chair that doubles as stuffed animal storage. Win! She also made a curtain for the window with cut fabric and baseball ribbon edging. She’s the best of us.
Whoever invented anything that doubles as anything for a kids room is a genius. And…shelf from the basement works like a charm. Two-year-old Arthur made the little bat hanging off the window blinds at the Nature Center.
Another major inspo point were these damn marquee lights. Not only does the ‘B’ in ‘BALL’ light up a different hue despite being from the same exact company as all the others, but they make up for this by also making you hang each letter with two nails or thumbtacks that must be exactly not too small or not too large to fit in the open hanging slots. And to really bring things to a must-have, you have to remove each and every one of them off the wall to ever light them up and then carefully slide them over the tacks/nails just so, without being able to really see what you’re doing. Guesswork - my favorite!
This picture took 17 days and several cuss words to stage.
Another Granny purchase was the baseball lamp. The little baseball alarm clock is interesting in that it plays a lot of different songs in a Casio keyboard type sound, but zero of the songs are baseball themed. And Gramma helped us with the certificate on the side of the dresser, commemorating Arthur’s first Buckeyes game in the horseshoe.
After the marquee lights sorta did me in, I took a few days of stagnation mostly so I could start delegating things out to someone who knows how to use a power drill. Our neighbor came over and drilled the locker bin basket to the wall to ensure it holds up to the inevitable throwing of things a la basketball.
Found the vintage “Take Me Out” ketchup ad on Etsy.
When we (I) decorated the nursery while I was pregnant, I put a lot of stuff from the past in his room. Pictures from vacations Matt and I had taken, lots of travel stuff. The thought was something like, “these are the experiences that have shaped us as a couple and now we’re expanding our family so naturally the first thing this kid is gonna want to see is a bunch of stuff that happened before they were born.” Eloquence. But now with seven years absolutely mastered as parents, we can think ahead with some premise of what he might be kinda into. Taking a wild guess here, but…maybe baseball?
I found a fun print of baseball parks that you can scratch off once you’ve visited. He was VERY jazzed about this.
The “You are perfect to me” sign was the very very first thing I ever bought for his room, in March of 2016 at the gift shop at the Strathmore Mansion. The shelf below is perfect for his treasures, notably his AA championship ring and baseballs from the MLB NYC flagship store.
I salvaged my pride with this over-the-door basketball hoop. It’s awesome. It was difficult to put together AND I did it under the pressure of being checked on for progress updates approximately every six seconds. But it works and I’ll admit, it’s fun to play “1 v 1” as Arthur calls it with the thing counting down and playing celebratory game sounds and buzzers and score keeping.
After this, I’m basically ready to assemble a spaceship so someone call NASA.
Overall, it was fun putting this all together. I painted the walls with Madonna music cranked while everyone was out of the house, having just went to her concert in DC. And Arthur has loved it and hasn’t one time expressed nostalgia for his old room, though he does sometimes wander in there and read a book on the floor. He’s had friends over, he’s started little projects at his desk, and he seems more likely to chill out in this room than he ever did in his old one. So far he has wanted to keep it pretty clean, which I’m guessing won’t last. It’s my new second-favorite room in the house, behind the piano/writing/vinyl/books room (otherwise known as the “no one else come in here” room). It’s a close second.
Here’s a few more pictures that show the totality of it. And if you come over, don’t look in the old room, as I don’t have it in me to take down anything off the walls, including the 2,694 glow-in-the-dark stars. Unless you help me, of course.
