Here’s my tip to other pregnant women: If there’s some idea you have floating in your mind, but you keep putting it off or saying no because logically you know it doesn’t make sense, just go ahead and do it NOW. Otherwise, you’re going to hit 38 weeks and decide that it needs to happen that minute, and all logic goes out the window.
Normally, I am queen of logic. It rules my life. I am fine with putting off projects or saying no to things, because I know the reasons why it wouldn’t be a good idea. And so this entire pregnancy I’ve been saying that no, the guest room can stay the way it is for now. No, we don’t need a second baby room right now. The baby wouldn’t be using it right away anyway - I mean E slept in the living room for the first few months of his life. This baby can sleep in our room if need be.
And then it changed to, well why don’t we move the guest bed out of that room while we have the help to do so? We won’t really do anything else to that room now, because it doesn’t need it. We have plenty of years ahead of us to set it up the way we want. We definitely don’t need to paint it now - the wall color is fine.
Guess what an almost due Mama hates? Fine.
Fine is not good enough. Fine is insulting to this tiny human I’ve been growing for nine months. Fine wakes me up in the middle of the night. Fine was not going to cut it.
So first, the closet needed work. My argument was that there was too much we needed to store in there (sheets and a vacuum and so many baby clothes!) that we might as well rip out the old shelf system that I hated, and install a new closet organizer. Because why not.
So we did. And I thought we were done. The rest of the room could start coming together and would work for the new baby, or E when he moves to a bigger bed, and we’d be fine. We even started to move in some furniture.
There was just one thing bugging me. The paint.
The paint was fine. Again, that word. I didn’t mind the color. It wasn’t fun and didn’t scream kids room, but it wasn’t offensive either. But here’s the thing.. the builders had painted it with a flat/matte paint. I get why. It hides any imperfections and looks great… but here’s the thing. I HATE flat paint. And my house is covered in it.
You know what else flat paint does? It shows every bit of dirt. Every finger print. And it doesn’t clean up that well. So I hate it with a passion. And all I could think of was putting two little kids in this room with flat paint and seeing so much dirt and finger prints and not being able to clean it.
And so the crazy comes out.
I had Tom go out and buy paint. On a weekend where I was so sick I could barely function and Tom looked at me in horror every time I coughed or tried to talk, I decided to paint the room. The best part is the color I picked - it’s almost exactly the same as the color the walls were. Except in a satin finish instead of flat. But it makes me so much happier knowing it’s there, and I did pick out a fun accent wall, so the room does look different.
Still. Crazy. I know that.
38 weeks pregnant and sick are not the times when you should be painting a room. I should have done it months ago when I thought about it, but whatever. It’s done, and now I feel like the baby can come! We can move the crib into that room, we can take out the infant toys, we can put up shades on the windows.
Now that it’s done, I’m so happy I did it. Let’s hope new baby likes it too!
