My Room (Guest Post By Mary Beth)
/During the bedroom switch, I moved up from the basement into my old/new room. This is the room that used to be mine and now is mine again. Since all of the little girls share a room now I have my own. Most kids talk about how they love having their own rooms but I have to adjust to not sleeping with either Katie and Karoline. It's a little bit weird to have my own bed and room. (Karoline now says she has two rooms: mine and hers and she still sleeps in mom's room at least half of most nights. Only Karoline could manage to come away from this project with 3 bedrooms). I do LOVE having my own quiet room though! We were not going to have to make any changes to the room except move my furniture up. Then we did the little girls room and their quilt didn't really match their room. Then the next morning, Mom moved my quilt in and it did match perfectly, though at the time I wish it didn't because I love that quilt. So... Mom said that if I wanted to that I could keep my quilt and we could just get the little girls a new one that was like it, or we could swap, or they could keep mine and I could get a new one. I knew that my quilt matched perfectly and so we cleaned out my new room and made another trip to Target. Now, after getting the OK from Dad, we headed off to Target and left with:
Polka Dot Wall Stickers
Polka Dot Curtains (They haven't really been hung yet. We need a bigger rod.)
And a Pretty Striped Rug
The rest of my room is:
A Dresser From Grandma and two white American Girl Doll shelves with free handed bows painted by mom.
A bookcase that is just like the little girls except it's the older version which they don't sell anymore, so this just means that it is green instead of pink and it doesn't have a toy chest drawer.
All and all, a GREAT ROOM! With a great theme: POLKA DOTS! We are still going to hang some pictures. The room didn't need to be painted either. It is blue. And the curtains make the light from outside shine this really pretty pink tone and my room looks pink-ish/purple-ish off of the walls:-)
A Room Where Best Friends Begin Their Forever
/As it began to dawn on us that both Katie and Karoline would lose their "best friends" (only friends?) to moves in the same week, Mike grew very protective. He wanted to do something for them. We both really just wanted to protect them from the hurt. Truth be told, the hurt wasn't limited to the little girls. For the last five years, Gracie has been in the space between Katie and Karoline. They don't have any memories of life in this house without her in it.And it's difficult for all of us to remember a time when she wasn't part of the family.
It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I deal with stress by cleaning and organizing my house. My friends remember how immaculate the house was the day the cancer diagnosis came. Mike, however, does not clean when he is stressed;-). His role was different. He instructed me to do whatever it took to create a new place for three little girls to grow up as best friends. He actually said, "I want them to have the perfect little girls' room and I want the room to make them happy." He's a very sweet guy and nothing brings out the sweet in him like his little girls. So, I abandoned my plan not to spend any money. He wanted to make a gift of this room and I was the instrument.
The bed was given to us by my mother when we got married. It's queen-sized. Katie and Karoline can both sleep there.TheGood Shepherd picture above the headboard was a gift to me from Patrick's godmother. I love the idea of the Good shepherd watching my sleeping babies.
This dresser came from my father's attic.
This one came from my mother's house. We need one for Sarah, but I'm going to scour Craigslist for awhile and see what pops up.
The bookcase came from Costco a couple of years ago.
My stepfather made the stuffed animal shelf for Michael's nursery 21 years ago. It has moved with us three times. And this bookcase was an old white pantry shelf in my in-law's basement before they moved. I painted it in a Home Depot Disney shade called "Invitation to a Princess." Appropriate, no?
The room didn't really need painting but it did sort of look worn. We found stickers at Target and covered all the dings with flowers and butterflies. Tah-dah! Much quicker than a coat of paint.
These curtains were too cute for words, so we picked them up when we picked up the stickers.
And then, I saw this rug. Hopscotch? Worth every penny just to watch Karoline try to do it. Worth even more to watch Daddy show Karoline how it's done.
Around this time, I learned that Jessica and I were doing the same thing three thousand miles from one another. That made Mary Beth and I giggle as we continued to decorate.
Above the bed are pictures of the girls in the bluebells. They are just gorgeous in these frames. We're doing one above the chest for Karoline, so there will be three in all, but Target needs a little time to replenish the stock. Costco did a fabulous job with the enlargements, just like Lori said they would.
The little girls helped with all the moving out and they were there as we moved furniture in, but we banished them to the basement while we stuck flowers on the walls and hung curtains at the window. When we invited them back to their new room, they reacted exactly as their Daddy had hoped.
The quilt on the bed was actually Mary Beth's. I pulled it off her bed and was delighted by the way it looked in the room.
That left Mary Beth without a quilt and so begins the story for tomorrow..
What Have We Done Here?
/
schoolroom before
We dismantled the "schoolroom." This was a long time coming. And I think it's a good thing. Last year, around this time, with bedrest looming, I began to think about that room and how tied we were to it. I was a little panicked by the prospect of "schooling" without it. And then, lo and behold, the "schoolroom" was moved bedside.
bedrest nest
Except it wasn't. I was in bed and the children came into my room for instruction and conversation, but the schoolroom still existed. And the children went in there and pretty much had their way with the resources. The schoolroom was trashed. Even those things that were well-intentioned (can you say "endless Montessori printables?" Mary Beth's Montessori blogroll is three times what mine is), were taking up lots of room. During bedrest, I learned I didn't need that big, beautiful room to educate my children. What I really needed was just to give them my "uncluttered" attention. After the baby was born, I was utterly overwhelmed by the "stuff" in that schoolroom every time I wandered in there. And that wasn't all that often. I had broken my schoolroom habit.
The room is huge. And we had kids who didn't really have a bedroom. Three of them, to be exact. So, it hit me late one night, that the schoolroom had to go. The room I so lovingly created when we moved into this house nearly eight years ago, wasn't the best use of that space any more. Truth is, as nice as that room was, it encouraged some unhealthy things.
- I was way too sedentary there. I would plop down in the desk chair and read, and point, and direct and pretty much never get up.
- The computer was way too available there. Just a quick check while plopped in the aforementioned chair..sigh...
- We had filled it with too much stuff. Too much stuff. Just because there's room for it, doesn't mean we should have it.
- We were cramped in there and it was too busy. It had begun to feel a bit like a busy fishbowl.
- I was burned out and I really felt like the schoolroom was feeding the fire. I wanted to begin again with a truly clean slate.
the pantry before
So, we dismantled the schoolroom. We relocated many of the hands-on materials to a closet in the mudroom. Like the schoolroom, I had loved that closet when I first filled it. All neat and tidy, all full of food storage. Attachments, attachments, attachments. Now, I determined to fit a room full of stuff into the pantry closet, while relocating the pantry items to the kitchen. I would need to pare down the manipulatives and the pantry items and some kitchen items. This was to be detachment in a big way.
kitchen pantry
the new mudroom closet
And I did it. And it's a good thing.
Then, I moved the core materials of our learning--essential books, paper, crayons, and pencils, etc,--to our sunroom. There are three walls of windows there and then one half wall of wall space. I was not going to put anything in front of the windows. So, I forced a roomful of materials against one wall. The rest are to be given away. More detachment.
Still a good thing.
The computer was moved into the family room. The entire middle floor of the house began to open itself up to our active learning there. I can see how much more I'm going to move during the day now. The children have desks and some books in their bedrooms. The ones who are old enough be encouraged to spend time each day in quiet study at their desks. They'll curl up on the couch with me to read. We'll enjoy the fireplace much more this winter. And yes, I'll fold laundry throughout the day. I'll make sure that kitchen stays clean. I'll probably sweep the floor a lot more often. I don't think it will be a bad thing to integrate our learning and our household activities.
And I'm so looking forward to having our mantel in front of us all day.
It's all looking like a very good thing.
Oh, and that left me with a very large, empty room where the schoolroom once lived. More on that room tomorrow:-).
