Perfect!

I think for a few months we all knew it was coming, we just didn't want to talk about it. As the holidays (and time off from school) approached we, as a family, started to talk about taking apart Grey's room. On Thursday it was decided that Ry would move back into his old room, since he had gotten booted when we found out we were expecting Grey. But he had a couple conditions; we had to paint over Grey's jungle print with two walls being green and two walls being tan, and we had to make it a GI Joe room. So . . . not only was it going to be hard enough to dismantle Grey's room, now I had to paint it, something I swore that after painting it the first time I would never do again.

On Friday Bill and I found ourselves at Target buying GI Joe bedding, then at Sherwin Williams picking out paint, a gallon of green and a gallon of tan. As we bought all the needed supplies we found ourselves getting excited for Riley. But as we walked into Grey's room and started unscrewing his crib, we found ourselves in tears.

First of all, what we were going to do with everything? I had called a co-worker earlier in the week to offer her a few of Grey's things but couldn't follow through with it. Now Bill and I had a room full of dismantled stuff; crib and bedding, changing table and diapers, toy chest full of his toys, and his swing. The closet had even more stuff; highchair, stroller, car seat, play gym. His dresser was still full of his clothes. It seemed like we were only moving things from his room out into the living room. Now Grey was everywhere! Overwhelmed I called my mom to help us.

As she stumbled through our living room into Grey's room, she found both Bill and I crying as we attempted to take his toys out of his toy chest and put them into a big black trash bag. No matter how hard we tried, we just couldn't bring ourselves to do it. Then my mom came up with this great idea.

She suggested that we bag up his toys, but use his toy chest as a keepsake chest and put it in our room. In it we would keep only the things we really needed. Brilliant! For some reason, both Bill and I could handle that. In the mess we had created, suddenly Grey's things became a clutter that we could get rid of, needing to keep only the things that we held dear to us. We also kept all his clothes, bibs, and blankets that meant something to us. We decided to have them made into a quilt.

After we loaded up my truck with Grey's "stuff", we decided as a family what we would do with it. The decision was easy, as all six of us knew at once that it should all be donated to Hope Hospice in New Braunfels, in an attempt to try to repay them for all they have given us these last 13 months. Bill will drop them off tomorrow after he get off his night shift. Selfishly, I'm glad it's him doing it instead of me.

After the truck was loaded, Bill and I started taping, then painting his room. Bill was awesome! Even though he had to be at work the next morning at 7 am, he was up past midnight helping me get a good start on Ry's room. We got the 2 green walls painted before we called it a night.

This morning I woke up early and touched up the greenwalls, then started on the tan. I was so anal about it all, knowing that Grey would want Ry to have the perfect room. As of this evening, he does.

As Riley and I finished making his bed, he ran into his old room. He came back with his picture of Grey and Grey's favorite bath toy (a cheetah devil duck that Ry had given him) that he had found yesterday going through his things.

"There. Now it's perfect!" Ry shouted as he jumped up and down on his new bed, happier than I have seen him in a long time.

Perfect.