Squeakles' Bedroom

I'm making an actual effort to not only clean, but organize our apartment. By "actual effort", I mean that I am trying to do things like get rid of things we don't need and find permanent away places for things we do need, rather than just shuffling things around, making one room look presentable by moving all the excess stuff to another room. It's possible that this is an impossible task because we only have three rooms (four if you count the bathroom) and we've got a lot of furniture, and this problem has only compounded since we started acquiring baby stuff. But I'm determined to do what I can.

I started with Squeakles' room the other day. I actually didn't intend to embark on a major project but he was happily reading books in his crib, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to hang up a couple of pictures I've been meaning to put up for weeks now. First, the pictures weren't framed, so I had to do that. (I'd also bought the frames several weeks ago.) Then I needed a place on the wall to put them, which led me to rearrange the furniture just a little bit and clean and vacuum while I was at it. Squeakles was either reading in his crib while I did all this (I came across a book with pictures of cars, trains, etc. that he hadn't ever seen before, so he was very happy) or commenting on everything I was doing.

I moved the folding table out of his room and into the living room in a place that hopefully isn't too obtrusive and will allow us to whip out the table whenever we have guests and pretend that we normally eat at a table and not at our desks in the living room or off of plates perched on our laps while we sit in a chair. I moved my pink Victorian chair out into the living room and I have plans to put it out on the sidewalk on Saturday and post a freecycle alert so that maybe someone will pick it up. I moved our two dining room table chairs out into the hallway and I'm currently a little stymied about what to do with them. They will be useful whenever our table is open because of course we need to sit on something, but when the table is folded away, it would be nice for the chairs to be away too. (Anyone got an extra closet??) And I moved the infant car seat into a closet and the toddler car seat into our bedroom. I really wish we had a car and could just leave the car seat in it. I mean, the box the toddler car seat it in is the size of a small dresser. So that's got to go somewhere too - maybe this imaginary closet?!

So here I present to you Squeakles' room, kinda in 360.

First, here is his dresser and changing table. The balloon lamp on the dresser is the one I had growing up and Squeakles loves to look at it. He likes to call out from his crib, "I see geen one! I see red one! I see other red one!"

Second, here is the futon mattress on the floor where Squeakles usually goes to sleep. We lie down with him and sing songs or talk a little bit until he falls asleep, and then if we haven't passed out too, we then move him to his crib. We have thoughts of getting him to start going to sleep in his crib, but not until after our upcoming trip to Florida. (No point in starting now and then disrupting things for a week.)

You can also see the new pictures I hung on the wall. The photo of the turtle was taken by Amber, and the photo of the bird was taken by Amelie. Squeakles loves both pictures and begs me to pick him up so he can "look at it?!" He points to the bird and says "birdie!! teet teet!", and he points to the turtle and says "turtle! what does turtle say?" and then "Hi Squeakles!" because that's what I told him the turtle says.

(And the quilt is handmade by my grandmother and given to us as a wedding gift.)

Next, here is my lovely rocking chair, which Squeakles doesn't especially care for, at least not when he was an infant. He could never fall asleep if I was happily rocking in it, no, I had to sit perfectly still to get him to fall asleep.

(I'm also planning to get rid of the coffee table you see in the picture below and replace it with a bookcase.)

And finally, here is his crib, where he actually sleeps a lot of the time now.

So as you can see, it's not really a cohesive decorating scheme. But you should have seen the room before I reorganized and cleaned. At least there's room to move around now and everything in there is actually functional.