Decorating Diva

Recently, I've been working on decorating my daughter's room. We moved into our new house in Albuquerque in January, and after moping around and kind of hating it for a few months, I decided I needed to get off my ass and actually DO something around here. There are a couple reasons for my deep resistance to decorating. First, I was raised a military kid, and most of the time we weren't even allowed to put a nail hole in the wall of our rooms, not to even mention painting, or any other permanent, or semi-permanent alterations. Second, I am possibly the most crazy perfectionist I know. To the point where I can't actually DO anything for fear of doing it wrong. I like the idea of decorating, and making a space my own, so I plan, and I pick up paint samples, and I clip magazines, etc. etc., but never seem to create anything. So, when my darling husband volunteered to actually paint, I took a deep breath, and said yes, let's do it. I wish I had a picture to show. It's coming together really cute.

The walls are green on the bottom and blue on the top (grass and sky, Madeline's choice). Her bed has a quilt with bright pastels and flowers. On the walls currently, we seem to have a butterfly theme. A few 3D sparkly butterflies over the bed, and one cute little framed print by the window for balance. I spent most of the day today searching for the perfect curtains. (See, not kidding about the perfectionist thing.) No luck, as I have a request for rainbows. I'm starting to think I'm going to have to make them. Yikes. Which will involve not only finding the fabric, and the pattern, but purchasing a sewing machine, since my mom's is no longer available for borrowing. I'm determined to finish this room though. I really want Madeline to feel at home in this house, and like she has a special space. I want her to know that I think she is worth the work and effort. I also want to start working on the perfectionist thing. She seems to have picked it up from me, as I get fairly regular reports from school that when an activity arises that she knows she'll have to try hard on, she doesn't want to do it at all. Sound familiar?

Speaking of the mighty curtain hunt today, my sidekick Zachary was along for the ride, as usual. I was a little worried about hauling him around town with no training potty in sight, but I decided to put him in the disposable training pants (not too terribly different from diapers as far as absorbency goes), and go for it. Bless his little heart, he was totally doing the pee pee dance in the middle of the food court, and try as I might, I couldn't even get him to sit on the big potty, so he just held it all the way home so he could go in his own potty. So, now we have to work on not being scared of falling in the toilet. Not an unusual fear for a tiny bottomed little boy, but one that we really do need to address. I cannot be chained to the mini toilet forever.