Making the Baby Room

Xie and I picked a room for the baby, and transformed that room into a genuine “baby room” over the last few weeks.

There were two interesting things about the process of fixing up a baby room. The first was another way to make this whole thing “feel real”. Of course, there’s no denying that we’re pregnant, and the effects on Xie’s body are very real. But, there are many things about having a baby that are still very abstract, and often it is still hard to understand that we aren’t just pregnant, but will have an actual real baby in just a few weeks. The big focus right now is on learning about and planning for the birth. We aren’t spending too much time worrying about what happens afterward. So, doing something very real, which can seen in a big, physical manifestation in our house, makes the baby seem a little more real, like an actual person that will be living with us, in our house.

The other very interesting thing had to do with a simple design that we painted on one of the walls. First, deciding to paint the room was a big deal, as was choosing the colors. At some point, we decided that we wanted there to be some design on the walls, and not just plain color. We discussed it for a bit: should it be abstract, realistic or something in between? How much of the walls should be covered with the design, etc.?

We decided on a vine design, with leaves and flowers. We decided to make it on the abstract side, with no shading, and using a pattern to make the leaves and flowers all similar. At first we were thinking of having vines on all of the walls, but eventually we decided for just one vine, winding back and forth on the corner between two walls. Finally, we did a mock-up study of the idea, using some software on Xie’s computer. When we were happy with how the mock-up looked, we printed it out, and used it for a guide to sketch the design out on the wall with a pencil. The sketching and painting of the design took about half a day, with some breaks in between efforts, waiting for paint to dry.

Afterward, we were very happy with the results of the whole room, the freshly painted yellow and red walls, and our vine design painted in the corner. I had to keep going back into the room, during different times of the day, and just sit there for a minute and admire the whole thing.

Later, Xie and I were admiring the room together. We were glad about the whole process. Part of the inspiration came from the experience of having the interior of my house painted, right before selling it. The house was so much nicer inside, that we decided that we should have done it long before, in order to be able to appreciate our efforts for ourselves. We recalled this, when deciding to go ahead and paint the baby’s room.

But even more interesting was the simple vine design that we had painted in the room. It really changes the feel of the room, making it stand out from all of the other rooms in the house, without being obtrusive or anything. We were very happy with the results. We discussed the whole process. It had really been pretty easy, brainstorming, refining, practicing with a mock-up, and then executing it. I wondered, “why haven’t we already done something like this for ourselves?”

It turns out that deciding to have a baby has been a very inspiring for us. We are going to be significantly changing our lives, and how we live them. We are very, very excited about all of the things to do and experience with the baby/kid/adolescent/adult that we will be raising. We spend time talking about different things that the kid might like to learn about, that we can teach them, or about different experiences that we’ll have together, as a family, such as going camping or traveling. Painting the simple vine design on the wall is representative of all of the wonderful experiences that we’ll be having, as a result of having decided to have a baby, which we might not have otherwise had. I hope that all of these experiences will all be so fun and satisfying!

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