Way back when Owen was born we held off on decorating his bedroom for a couple of reasons, first we didn’t know if we were having a girl or boy, second we were just becoming new parents and had no clue of anything baby related and third I was just too darn tired to think straight. We didn’t do any actually decorating until we found out we were pregnant again with Brandon. Then we starting thinking and made some huge changes in our home…as in finishing our basement, moving the office to the main floor and moving Owen into his new bedroom. While we were doing all this moving around we decided we were ready to decorate; Owen was just over 1 year and was starting to show interests in trucks and cars and things that go. We found a wonderful website that sells all things baby and toddler bedding…Nursery Depot. We found a bedding set we really liked, ordered up the matching pieces and got decorating. We didn’t go too crazy as I was pregnant and relied heavily on Sean doing the work, plus we wanted to make sure whatever we did would grow with Owen and give him opportunity to change it up if he wanted. We painted a feature wall and hung some pictures. We did get creative though and bought some canvas and letters spelling out Owen’s name. We painted the canvas and added Owen’s hands and feet prints to the canvas, along with his name, then added a canvas on either side with stencils of an airplane and car. We were very happy with the result and decided we wanted to do the same with Brandon’s room once he was born. We had grand ambitions to do all this decorating in the first 3 months of Brandon’s life (this is when he would be sleeping in our room in the bassinet) but we found we were even more tired this time around and it came and went.
Finally this year we decided that in conjunction with Owen and Brandon moving into their new beds we would decorate Brandon’s room. We found a paint color, picked up the canvas and letters to spell out Brandon’s name, found some stencils and I even found some wall decals that were themed to their current interests. Owen and Brandon came with me one day and picked out the wall decals — Owen picked dinosaurs and Brandon picked Cars and Trucks. Sean painted the wall in Brandon’s room with some help from Owen (Brandon and I baked in the kitchen). That one night when Brandon couldn’t sleep in his room (because of the paint drying), Owen and Brandon got a REAL treat…Owen slept in Mommy and Daddy’s bed and Brandon slept in Owen’s really big bed — Mommy slept with Owen and Daddy was suppose to sleep with Brandon but once Daddy decided it was his bedtime, Brandon was not in the mood to share — so Daddy slept in Brandon’s room in the twin bed with the paint drying.
The next day we painted another coat and took the boys out to see Toy Story 3 with Uncle Derek, Aunty Colette and Zoe. Owen stayed through the whole movie and very much enjoyed it; Brandon watched the first 20 minutes or so and then wanted to walk around. Lucky Daddy got to sit in the lobby with Brandon sleeping on his lap. Now everytime we drive past Scotia Place Theatre (Silver City, WEM), Owen tells us about how he saw Toy Story number 3 with Zoe on the really really big tv.
The following day we moved all the furniture back into place and headed outside to do some painting. We laid out a drop cloth on the drive way and gave Owen and Brandon free reign to paint their own canvas’ as they wanted. They thoroughly enjoyed it and it was nothing to convince them to let us paint their feet and hands for prints on canvas.
After the painting and clean up we headed up to their bedrooms and let them put up their wall decals. Owen’s room was done first and he wanted all his decals beside his bed so he could see his dinosaurs when he went to sleep at night. Brandon’s room was done next and Brandon was very gracious to let Owen help him with putting the decals up. Brandon liked Owen’s idea and wanted all his decals beside his bed so he could also see them when he went to bed at night. Now most nights after Sean and I put the boys to bed, we can hear them talking to their wall decals…Owen naming his dinosaurs and Brandon counting his cars and trucks.
