Crib sweet crib

Our future child’s room is finished. Or nearly so. It needs some shelves to be put up, and it needs a mattress pad for the crib mattress.

Oh, and it needs a baby.

It can’t really be the baby’s room until that happens.

I can’t really believe there will be a live baby in that room.

The second we finished the majority of the room – once we had a rug down and a crib up and some decorations adorning the walls – it instantly seemed real. I mean, it’s seemed real for me since I first felt the baby kicking at its womb, forcing its legs against its temporary home in what seemed like a greeting. But with each new concept – the ultrasound, the kick, the baby class, the movement, the stroller, the impending due date – it seems even more and more real.

The room, though – that’s a sight. There it is – our child’s future room, right there next to ours. Someday, those walls will be drawn on, covered with posters, plastered with hobbies and fleeting dreams. The door might be decorated with a Keep Out sign or his/her name. Even now, you can see the plans being made – the books, the animals, the itty bitty clothes that don’t even seem large enough for the $4 Curious George doll we picked up at Hy Vee.

It hits hard, right at home – right IN home, you could say. Whenever I walk by, I can’t help but turn my head and look. It’s the most colorful thing in our home, that room. It’s unlike anything we’ve decorated, yet it looks perfectly at peace with the rest of the décor.

We’re getting closer than we’ve ever considered. We’re getting anxious. We’re ready for the whole thing to be over with so we can meet this new child.

But regardless of all that – regardless of how ready we are and how prepared we can be for labor, for protection, for support – at least we know we have someplace for Baby Vilhauer to lay his/her head.