life and puppies

I wish I had realized how important the crib bedding was going to be to me before I registered for any. Or bought any. Because frankly, I am now obsessed with how to fix what I perceive as a major flaw in Bear’s bedroom. Moving Bear into our room has been great. For the most part. The only real downside? Yes. You guessed it. Or, I guess, I already told you. It’s the bedding. Dear God, please help me come to some sort of resolution about this. I need to move on to other parts of life that need tending to. I simply can’t look at bedding anymore.

When Bear was living in the living room or, rather, when Bear’s stuff was living in the living room (Bear lived just as much in our room and on the dining room table and in her swing as much as she lived in the living room), we had these sheets on her crib and these changing pad covers on her changing pad. We had the blue dots and the pink dots for both the crib and as the cover. As you may remember, though, these kinda worked because the whole room was a million different colors. We were using this rug, for crying out loud. It worked. Or at least I declared it did.

Fast forward to Bear in her new room. Bear’s new room is painted this color because that was the color I asked AO to paint our bedroom (and I love it) and AO made it pretty clear he was not interested in repainting it. I actually love, love, love the color, but it changed the way Bear’s stuff looked. Her white crib and changing table really pop now, and her yellow lamp and radio make more of a statement. The way her room looked started to bug me because I no longer liked the mish-mash; it looked thoughtless instead of creative. I decided I needed to put a palette together. Obviously I would need to use a bold and dark blue, as well as a sunny yellow. I then added some gray to pick up the pouf. I threw in a dash of aqua and white.

I started with bedding and I started with fervor. I ordered pieces from this set. It was on back order, which bummed me out. As the weeks passed, I started to worry I had chosen wrong. I thought, “Maybe that yellow isn’t quite right. Maybe there’s too much gray. Will it relate to the blue?” Eventually, I called Land of Nod and asked them not to send it. I was told, though, that some pieces had just shipped. The kind customer service rep told me, though, that if I didn’t like it, they’d be glad to take it back for free, as it was an item off of my registry (yes, I stuck it on that registry post-baby). That sounded more than reasonable. My next steps, though? Not so much. The bedding came and we used it and I slowly began to realize it was all wrong. It’s really cute, but the yellow is way too deep mustard and doesn’t relate to the sunny yellow tones the way I wanted it to. Damn. It. I decided to sit with it, though, because what else was I going to do. [Answer: see the first paragraph in this post.]

I moved on.

After consultation with the GAOOG, I decided the next thing that needed to change was the rug. GAOOG declared the rug rug non grata and I had to agree. It’s way cute, but it was throwing everything off with its pink and red and orange shapes. I swapped in this. We already had one in the room from when it was in our bedroom (in the smaller size) so adding a bigger one seemed like it made sense. I think it does. It’s probably a little weird, but the whites look nice with the blue walls and blonde bamboo floors. Plus, I think Bear likes the way it feels.

The next challenge was storage. The Target boxes I bought fit perfectly into the Ikea bookshelf but they were not going to work with my new color scheme. I looked and looked but couldn’t find anything out there that was both the right size and right color. My usual suspects weren’t giving me anything I could use. After waiting it out for a bit, though, Land of Nod revealed with these numbers. It’s like they knew I was struggling and decided to throw me a bone. They’re so sweet. I ordered a couple in yellow and aqua, and one in blue. I also ordered this awesome mcawesome thing in yellow to hide all of Bear’s diaper-related accoutrements and two of these for the actual diapers and wipes and covers. Ta da! Blue and yellow all over! Bear is showing her West High allegiance early and often.

Having solved the storage and rug issues, I find myself back to square one on the bedding. Well, not exactly square one. I’m out whatever I paid for the Land of Nod stuff (I may try to sell it) and I’m still not quite sure what to do. I’ve been in major Etsy consultation mode, looking specifically at these options. And these. And these. But I can’t seem to pull the trigger. I am now a serious crib-bedding-phobe. I realize I brought it on myself, but that doesn’t change the diagnosis.

I think I’ve made a very strong showing that I need serious help. Please, Dear Reader, help me.