Make room for Henry...

I've never had to opportunity to properly "nest."  We got the call for Josiah on a Friday and picked him up the following Monday, leaving me barely enough time to google "How to take care of newborn," (no seriously....I did that) let alone make a space that I deemed worthy to bring that sweet baby home into.  48 hours...that was all the time I had to gather all the necessary items to dress, feed, bathe, and get a crib together for our son.  (And thanks to my dear friend, Chrissy who kept my head from spinning and her sister-in-law, we were lavished with all we needed very quickly.)  

By the time I could catch my breath before Molly came, this disaster struck...

The air conditioner in the attic had been leaking for months without us knowing leaving a lovely multi-colored mold that leaked into our upstairs bedroom and into downstairs living room below.   

We were out of the house for 4 months while we lived with my very gracious and generous parents until the mold was eradicated, leaving me with the desire to nest with no tree.
  
Finally, by the time Sadie was born, I managed to at least have a girly bird theme in place.  But have you ever tried to get a nursery done when babies share a room?  When Molly was sleeping in it, I couldn't exactly work in there.  And when she wasn't, she wanted to "help" me paint, leaving my girls' tree mural undone before it was painted over completely.  *sniffle*

 

oh poor tree :(  You never did get all of your flowers finished. 

When we found out I was pregnant with baby #3, we knew we needed to expand our house.  With only two bedrooms upstairs, we needed more room.  We planned and saved and found a builder who understood the challenges of working on a 150+ year old home with a lot of "character." (And by "character," I mean no floor was level, no two window sills were the same level from the ceiling, and the house has been pieced together with about 5 additions.)  We thought that it would be a good plan to put a third bedroom upstairs, but when that proved to be too costly, our next plan was to put our new bedroom in our former living room downstairs and build another living room onto the house.  The girls would get our old room, which was the bigger of the two upstairs, and their room would be turned into the new nursery.  I am SO happy with how it turned out and I'll have to share lots of pictures of ALL the new rooms, but for now...onto Henry's room!  

The pictures are coming...but the story is worth reading so please bear with me...  

After living with my parents for 3 months (again...thank you, Mom and Dad!) while the addition was completed, I did a lot of pinning and planning for a baby boy nursery.  Honestly, if it were up to me, I would have done something with woodland creatures or pirates (have you SEEN baby boy pirate bedding?!?  SOOOO cute!)  But, Justin wanted to celebrate the impending arrival of his boy with his beloved Phillies.  I figured since this was his last shot to have a boy and the nursery that HE always wanted, I would embrace it (even if it would set our little man up for a lifetime full of disappointment and heartache as a future Phillies fan.)  We like to build character, I guess.  

After having moved back into the house for about 2 months, the room that would soon be Henry's was a MESS.  If you've ever had the pleasure of moving or nesting a whole house, you know what a huge undertaking it is.  Things get shoved and stuffed into the sacrificial room while all the others get pieced together.  Poor Henry.  I'm glad he wasn't around to see how his room used to look like a scene from "Hoarders."

Getting the room ready was completely overwhelming.  For me, my goal was to make the walls look pretty, shove some boxes into closets and if need be, put piles just out of frame before taking pictures.  

Nesting.  Check.  

I was not prepared for my OCD husband who did not think that was such a good plan.  Mr. must-do-things-the-RIGHT-way had his own agenda and wanted to go through every single box until every single thing was put into its proper and eternal resting place.  Ugh!  (Hello?!  I have a DUE DATE here!)

I was not prepared how far he was going to take his plan.  

Just when almost everything was cleared from the room, and I was finally able to start painting the mural I was so excited about, Justin says to me, "I think we should go through all the boxes of clothes we have in the attic and decide what to do with them."  

"Ummm....NOW???  No.  Absolutely not.  You mean ALL the boys and girls clothes we own from size newborn to 3T?  All 17 bins of them?  No.  I'm PAINTING! Can't you see I'm NESTING HERE?!?!?"   

Truth be told, when we found out I was having a boy, I wasn't disappointed, I was TERRIFIED.  Of this.  Of clothes bins.  Of not only purging my girls' stuff, but having to face the bins marked "boy."  These were Josiah's things.  And they were not just clothes.  They represented a time in my life was so special and sacred because it was the first time I got to embrace my role as a mommy.  Every time I saw them, I got this empty feeling in my gut knowing something had been ripped away from me.  I had passed most of them onto my nephews, but for some reason, so many had been cycled back to me and found their way into my attic.  Where they, as far as I was concerned, could stay FOREVER. 

There was nothing I wanted done with them.  I couldn't throw them away because, honestly, the clothes were adorable.  We never had a shower for Josiah, and we were given a clothes allowance from DYFS, so every stitch of clothing for our boy was hand-picked and exactly what we wanted to dress our son in.  I didn't want to consign them because that would mean having to look at them and physically hand them over to be sold for no where near what they were worth to me.  They were fine in the attic, where I knew they were there and I didn't have to look at them.  Justin didn't think so.  Mr. Practical wanted them put away somewhere.  

In the end, I'm glad I lost.  

When the bins came out, the tears started flowing.  Justin dug through them, as I painted and he would ask me...  keep, consign, or throw away.  The memories flooded back to me like they were yesterday.  The way Josiah's new baby skin smelled, how his fuzzy hair felt, how tiny his hands used to be.  

Consign.  Consign.  Consign.  Get rid of them as fast as I could, I thought.  We could at least trade them in for store credit to get different clothes for Henry.     

    

Half way through the first bin, I was already emotionally exhausted.  "How can you DO this?"  I asked Justin.  "Doesn't this just depress you??"  His answer surprised me.  

"No," he said.  "Seeing these makes me really happy."  

Happy.  It was a strange emotion to attach to clothes that, to me,  represented the absence of our son and my death as a mommy of boys, who was now (thanks to this very painful activity) in the process of being forced to be resurrected.  I continued to paint, mulling over the word.  Happy.  Could seeing these clothes ever bring back that emotion like they once did?  They did for Justin.  I guess maybe they could for me too?  By the time the first bin was empty and piles lay on the floor, a strange new idea had begun to form.  

I can be happy that Josiah was here without being sad that he isn't. 

Strange.  I never realized those emotions could co-exist before that moment.  As we started the second bin, and then the third, and the forth, the consigning pile got smaller as the "keep" pile grew.  I remembered him in the lion sleeper in the sun when he had jaundice, and the mommy's All Star one with Justin's huge hat when he snuggled with his daddy, and how I took pictures of him wearing the one with the little doggie paws when he met his Aunt Robin for the first time. 

        

    

And as the pile grew, so did a new idea.  Maybe I didn't have 48 hours to nest for a son.  Maybe I had four and a half years.  Maybe they weren't Josiah's clothes.  Maybe they were always meant to be for Henry.  Because after all, had I received what I had really prayed most earnestly for, Henry would never have existed.  Our house of five would have had no vacancy. 

In the end, most of the clothes are in drawers now, waiting for our son to wear them.  I thought I was just getting a room ready, and God had other plans.  

It is the emptying and filling of rooms, and wombs, and drawers and attics that REALLY is the thing that makes a girl ready to be a Mama.  And knowing that God orchestrates it all in His perfect timing and in His perfect way that makes her into a Mama who is ready to teach her children the most important and difficult life lesson:  God is good.  

And He makes all things beautiful in his time...

(even if the five-year-in-the-making finished nursery did end up being a Phillies theme.)

**Just so you know, no pile was moved out of frame while taking these photos!  Thank you, Mr. do-things-the-RIGHT-way!  :) **

 

I have plans.  When Henry comes home, I'm going to sit in this chair and sing him this song and tell him how good God is to me.