Baby showers and nursery decorations

We spent the day yesterday sorting through our nursery stuff. We picked a crib of the three we've been given, we picked a crib mattress, we found online installation instructions for putting together our crib and the infant swing. We decided to buy black paint for the crib we chose, and researched the safety of painting a crib. We recognized how lucky we are to have been given these things.

Then we started the fun stuff. We're decorating the nursery with stuff we've had since our childhood. We don't have a theme for our nursery. Our theme is essentially 'us'. But I think it will work because it's just things that are meaningful to us. For me, this means hand painted ceramics made by my mom and aunt and me, a carousel horse collection, two cross-stitched carousel horse hangings made by my mom and grandma, and a painting K made for me in college of the members They Might Be Giants playing instruments under a tree. For K it means a wall hanging that says 'Kindness goes a long way', a picture of her grandma, and lots and lots of Star Wars stuff. We also have our wedding picture and a pug pop art piece that was given to us by A & C. We spent the day sorting through things, framing things, getting rid of things, deciding what is a toy and what is a decoration, and deciding how we will lay out the room. We can't actually do anything yet because we don't have shelves to put things on, but we are excited.

We've made plans for a home improvement day with our friends C & D in a few weeks. D loves home improvement projects and has every tool ever invented, so we were very happy to take them up on their offer to help us get our home in order. The big plans we have for the day include installing shelves in our bedroom, in the kitchen, and in the nursery, hanging pictures in our bathrooms and living room, putting together our crib, putting together a storage bench for the living room, and maybe some more stuff. None of it is hard, but there's a long list, so it's nice to have help to get it all done in one day. I'm going to cook lots of tasty food while everyone else does the heavy lifting.

Our friends J & S and their kids B & E stopped by unexpectedly yesterday afternoon. K & I were unshowered and still wearing our PJ's, but we were still happy to see them. The four of them are throwing us a baby shower for our local friends in March. Because we are decorating our nursery with so much Star Wars stuff, and because K, J, & S all love Star Wars, they've decided the theme will be Star Wars. They were excited about the menu - Yoda Soda and Wookie Cookies and other Star Wars goodies. They seem very excited about the shower, which is fun. We're excited too.

Yesterday afternoon, we finally showered and dressed and went to be panelists for our church's high school youth group. They are doing the sessions for the Our Whole Lives (OWL) sex-ed curriculum, and this week they were talking about GLBT issues. So K & I served on the panel with other GLBT adults (a gay man and a trans-woman). We all told our coming out stories - how we realized we were GLBT, how we told people, how people reacted. I talked about how my family rejected me, the trans-woman talked about how she got fired from her job, the gay man talked about how his dad fully accepted him and became a pflag advocate, K talked about how great her mom has been but how she's lost her relationship with her dad. The youth just sat there staring at us. They had zero questions for us. Who knows what they thought of the panel. Hopefully they got something out of it.

This weekend we fly to Florida for our two family baby showers. The weather will be in the 70's, which is awesome. And it's orange and strawberry season in FL, my favorite season. We noticed that people started buying things off our registry (3 very small things, but it's something). My family is big on handmade stuff, so we're excited to see what we're getting as gifts. Handmade gifts are our favorite! All of the drama seems to be settled down, so we should have a fun time with family and friends that we don't see often. I'm even meeting one of K's aunts for the first time, driving all the way from Ft. Lauderdale to Palm Bay (2.5 hours) for the shower.

I can't believe we're doing baby showers already! The baby seems so close and yet so far away. We'll be in the third trimester in just 2 weeks!