That's Life: October 2010

A few weeks ago the NICU that Sean was in celebrated their 20th anniversary! The celebration was at the zoo! Fun! This was Sean's first zoo trip. We mingled with the nurses, traced Sean's hand on the banner and got some ahhs. I was especially looking out for a specific nurse that was my favorite, Kathy. All the nurses were really sweet and knowledgeable, but I was so comfortable around this particular nurse so it was great letting her hold Sean and see how much he's grown.

We traced his hand on the banner to be hung in the NICU.

gibbons

There is a fairly new orangutan exhibit, but we didn't see them cause they had already gone to bed.

So, the next best thing is a scary statue of an orangutan, right??

Sean was so unsure of this giant guy. But I must admit it was interesting to see him react to the statue. I mean, to be able to see his little personality show was neat. Thomas is knocking on the orangutan to show Sean he isn't real, haha. Sean was still scared of it.

We said another thank you and goodbye to our favorite nurse and even saw the NICU Dr. Wheeler and gave him our thank yous too.

It was a fun visit and I'm sure there will be many more zoo tips in our future!

I still wouldn't call it completely done because I'm always wanting to add or change things. But I'm content and really don't want to spend any more money, so we'll call it done. Funny things: A) He's 14 months old and his room is finally done. B) He really doesn't care what his room looks like! ha!

The first thing we did was install a chair rail and paint the lower half brown. This room was previously Thomas' office and we didn't really want to paint it a gender specific color in case we wanted to restore it to the office one day or use it for subsequent children.

I so tried to resist doing the standard baby name over the crib. I really really wanted to be different. Well, I tried to be a lil different. I painted four canvases, good thing he has a short name, and glued on painted wooden letters. I thought it gave it more interesting depth. I'd still like to add more somehow, to make it a tad more interesting. Since this was previously Thomas' office he had this deer and also a very nice Ranger war print on the walls. Well, we took down the war print but Bambi, errr Buckee, never left. Thomas grew up with animals head in his room and house and he turned out okay. I think. There are a few metal planes throughout his room. My dad loved flying and being an air-traffic controller so I wanted to incorporate planes. oh and he loved astronomy, there are stars on his sheets.

Just inside the door to the right is this shelf.

Sailor outfit was lil Thomas'.

Thomas' belt when he was a young cowboy.

I found this quote somewhere, sometime ago and wrote it down. Such a sweet quote. I had fun experimenting with stenciling.

The shoes were Thomas' when he was a cute little boy!

I originally thought I wanted a short book case but then I stressed over what I would hang above it. So we went with the tall... so I could stress about what to put on all those shelves, haha. Plus being such a small room the tall book case may seem too large. Just a heads up if you ever come upon a short bookcase, tall bookcase dilemma.

Om the book shelf is black and white photo of my maternal grandfather maternal, "Pop", in uniform.

Thomas collected stamps, not very seriously, as a boy. So, he didn't mind that I pasted them on a piece of scrapbook paper and framed them.

The Survival book was Thomas' from Army Ranger days. I thought it would be fun to put it there between the Dr. Seuss books.

The blue teddy bear was on the wreath on the hospital door given to me by my mom. It's a Ty brand bean bag filled bear and says "My First Teddy Bear". We kept it in the NICU with Sean, so it's pretty special.

I made this picture holder thing-a-ma-bob.

I've always loved maps, globes and geography. Thomas does too. It started with the one large globe that my mom snagged from a school move. The others I found at Target, Marshalls, and a specialty shop. The tiniest one was my Pop's that my mom recently found when at my grandmother's house. It's a pencil sharpener.

I had sooo many stuffed animals as a child and it looks like Sean might be going down the same path. I utilized a small metal trashcan to hold some of the animals. I believe my dad got from his workplace, it has been cleaned and freshened up with a coat of spray paint. Oh, and the bear rug was mine....like from high school days, haha.

Once again something from Thomas' childhood, his little chair! Hippobank there on the shelf is from a friend, Amy, that painted it at our local self paint pottery studio, Practically Picasso.

And then we're back to the door wall. A dresser that will hopefully make it with Sean though his young years. Serves as the changing table for now. It's walmart, can't expect it to last too long. Rocking horse from Grandma (my mom) and a giant brown bear from a freshman year hall-mate during our Valentines gift exchange.

This coconut elephant lamp, with a small bulb in his belly, is from Thailand. And the little bottle is Sean's vitamins. He expects it every morning just after his diaper change. He'll open his mouth when he sees us grab it. so cute.

Once Sean was able to sit up on his own he became pretty good at entertaining himself before we came to get him. But I put this soft book in the crib so he would have something to read, haha.