So along with learning not to put the computer up on the counter this week, I also learned never to go painting a room based on a bedding or fabric until you actually have it in your hands. I had quite the little nightmare happen last night....
As you know we were set on Emily's bedding set, and had painted her walls a color that matched with her bedding bumper (light turquoise). Well the bedding set could be sold as a package, or separate individual pieces. Since I am primarily home and only working one day a week, money is always tight and we are on a budget. It is a sacrifice we chose to make during this season of our lives because it's very important to me to stay home with the kids for the first few years. Even if we lived 2 minutes away from our families and if any of our parents were retired, I would still choose to be the one to stay home with the kids. They are only little once for such a short time in their lives, and I don't want to miss out. Not to mention there are a lot of benefits to a parent being home with the kids. So anyway, went off on a tangent....But my point is, due to our choices money is tighter these days so I thought it would be more practical to list all the bedding as separate items on a registry for when I have my "sprinkle" (mini shower that people sometimes have for their 2nd baby). Then whatever wasn't ordered, I could go ahead and order afterward.
Well, I was going to order a sheet to have to match the color with the other fabric we need to get to make the curtains and recover a rocking chair. I went on the site yesterday (after just having been on it a day or two before), and suddenly the bumper said it was no longer available. Everything else was other than that. They still had a bedding package set available and on sale that included the bumper, so I texted my friend who works at PB and asked her to please go ahead and order it for me that day in case that ran out/was no longer available as well. Well, between the time I texted her and the time she responded just a little over an hour later, that was sold out/no longer available either. Mind you, the bumper is the only part of the whole bedding set that has the color of her room in it. We based the whole thing around that one part.
So I begin calling multiple stores and customer service numbers searching for this bumper. No one has it anywhere. Apparently it was a set that is only available online. No one had it in the back or in a warehouse anywhere...it was like it had fallen off the face of the earth. I even called the corporate #. She gave me a couple more stores to try that sometimes had things in that other stores didn't carry. But it was Sun night and they were now closed.
So I went ahead and posted something on FB in case any friends or friends of friends had the bumper or set that they were willing to sell. I even posted a couple ads on Craigslist under wanted section and "searching for" in baby section. I did get one response from a woman who had seen an ad posted 3 hours away in GA. And of course you don't want to send money until you've seen the item and have it in your hands with the scams out there. I tried anyway, no response back.
I was so bummed. I know it's just bedding, and I know that in 20 years from now it totally won't matter. But it meant a lot to me. Plus I feel guilty because when Ashley was born she had a beautiful brand new furniture set. With Emily, due to the change in my working status and budget, we have to make sacrifices so I can be home with the girls and we can't afford to buy her new furniture. We are using hand-me-downs, so it was important to me that she at least have a nice bedding set and special room.
Now that we have already painted the room teal, I started searching around to see if there were fabrics online that could match to make a bedding set in case it didn't work out. When I originally looked for bedding, I didn't see any fabrics that I really loved to begin with. And now that we're limited to a color scheme, it narrows it down even more. And I looked online for a couple hours last night trying to find pre-made baby bedding that matched the color, but everything was really cheesy and would definitely be settling. I was really disappointed.
Thankfully it all worked out. First thing this morning I called one of the two last resort numbers that corporate had given me to try. The first place I called started off with the whole "unfortunately that set was only available online", but the guy went to check the back just to be sure. He came back and told me that someone had just recently returned that very bumper to their store!!! They were worried that they wouldn't be able to sell it since it was just the bumper and they didn't carry any of the other pieces. I was thrilled!!! So they are shipping it to us.
Since the people all said the set is probably being discontinued and they weren't getting any more in, I decided to go ahead and just order all the other pieces now rather than risk losing them too. Matt's mom was very sweet and offered to get it/or part of it for us. Yay, so glad it worked out!!
Anyway, the first pics are from last week's belly shots at 23 weeks. The next set of pics are of Ashley's new big girl room all set up for her. I will post some Ashley updates soon.
One last thing--we finalized Emily's name. Instead of using the middle name, Denine, we are going to go with Emily Dena Shohen. Dena is after Matt's grandmother. I had really wanted to combine the middle names since my grandmother was so special to me and such a big influence in my life, but it really meant a lot to Matt to use Dena for those same reasons. I wanted to sacrifice and let Matt get the name he really wanted since it means a lot to him. Plus Matt never got a chance to meet my grandmother, but I had many years to get to know and love his grandmother. She was a good woman, and after being with Matt for so long she felt like a grandmother to me as well. Lastly I had wanted to use Irene for the middle name for longest time for our first kid, but then given my issues and not knowing if we'd even be able to have children, I thought Grace was much more fitting to symbolize God's amazing grace in the situation. We had had a few names picked out when naming Ashley, and I told Matt he could choose the first if I could have Grace for the middle. So since he could compromise for me, I figured I would do the same. Marriage is about compromise. So Emily Dena it is :)
We also decided to compromise with the nickname. I love the name Emma for the first name (it was even one that I had on the list when choosing Ashley's name), but Matt didn't want it since it's one of the "top names" right now. He wanted something less trendy. We both liked Emily so we went with that since it's less popular but similar. But Matt said he'd be fine with calling her either Emily or Emma for short for a nickname. (But since we have friends and a cousin's daughter with the name Emma, we will go with both names and then just stick with Emily when around them so it's not confusing). Lol.
Anyway, the first pics are from last week's belly shots at 23 weeks. The next set of pics are of Ashley's new big girl room all set up for her, and some cute shots of her.
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