Nursery Loot

We finally bought furniture and registered for/bought some pieces of the bedding!! It was definitely exciting - not just because we actually bought things for the nursery and it drove home the point that we WILL have a baby in 2.5 months, but because it was literally an adventure -- offfffff course there is a story...

We went last weekend and shopped for furniture and found some sets that we liked. We talked about it over the week last week and we definitely liked one set more than all of the rest. We had a wedding in South Georgia this past Saturday (more on that later) but decided we should go ahead and buy some of the furniture before we went down. We had some good coupons from some of the stores from signing up for registries or mailing lists so I wanted to at least use those before the expired and get some pieces. I wasn't sure if they could hold them and we weren't ready for them quite yet but decided we could find a place to store everything if needed.

We had a million errands to run and if you know me, you know I had a long list of things to do with the full knowledge that it wouldn't all get done. This definitely made the list. We went in hovered over the furniture for about 30 seconds before a sales associate smelled our credit card and the sense of urgency to buy things that comes with passing into the third trimester. Let me interject here to say that I have the best mother in law!! She came over on Friday evening and measured our nursery and did space planning for furniture. She and FJ looked up the dimensions of the pieces of furniture and decided what all we needed and where it should go - so we had an exact shopping list of the pieces we needed, the confidence that they would all fit, the knowledge of where they would go and the buy in of a licensed interior designer on the choices we had made! We felt pretty good. And broke. We weren't planning on buying as many pieces as we did until we did the space planning. Sooooo glad Joani was able to come over Friday night!

So we laid our cards on the table and told the sales woman that we had some coupons and had full intention of using registry completion coupons to buy other pieces. She let us know that we could buy everything that day, apply additional coupons later, hold the pieces that were available today and schedule delivery for everything at once on whatever date we wanted. It was like putting puzzle pieces together and everything fit!! We really appreciated her help because it took some very creative ordering because some pieces were in, some on order, some on back order, etc.

As we sat down to write up all of the orders and go over everything another couple sat next to us...turns out that they wanted the exact same furniture. We had just bought the last crib in stock and had also purchased the last dresser that was on order. They were so distraught because they had called the day before and there were 2 of each available...apparently someone bought a set the day before and we bought ours at 10:00 or so. Sitting right next to us, they gave the manager some sob story about how they had called in advance and driven an hour and a half to that store because they were the only ones with this furniture available and that she was 8 weeks away from her due date and HAD to have it. I think she thought we were going to give her our furniture? Uhhhhh - no. I mean you would figure if it had been that important, they would have purchased over the phone or gotten there before 11:00am on a Saturday. I can't say much since we are about 11 weeks out and hadn't bought furniture yet...

The manager offered to walk through the stock room for them - the sales woman that was helping us told us later after we walked away from that area that there was absolutely nothing back there - she had already checked that morning and there was the piece we bought which she had already tagged for us.

Now I realize that bad luck can still strike and I could get a call before the delivery that some how it's not there and we aren't going to get it in time, but it was all very dramatic for the purchasing of baby furniture!

We've still got to pick out patterns for the window treatments as well as the glider and ottoman. FJ's mom is all over it! She's also going to help us look for some accent pieces, but we found some we liked at the store, too. All in all it was really fun to pick everything out.

I also put up some pictures of the bedding/theme we chose. It's a jungle theme from Pottery Barn Kids with gingham accents. Definitely a compromise and some of the only bedding choices that we both agreed on. ha ha!

Now that all the fun stuff is almost taken care of we get to start trying to figure out whose insurance we are adding Rhett to (my enrollment begins any day now so we just have to figure out whose insurance makes more sense) so that we can start finding a pediatrician. We got our confirmation from Moms On Call and it included a list of things we need to have or do before delivery and before they come...clearly this woman is after my heart because she provided a check list with instructions on things like finding a pediatrician - complete with time lines. Whew. Apparently once we get the car seat and base, we also get to take a trip to the fire station. Luckily there are about 14 within 5 miles of us. We've narrowed the list down to two daycares and need to pull the trigger and reserve our spot for one of those. There is definitely a long list of things to do and I am positive this list is going to make time seem like it is flying by even faster than it is right now...scary and exciting all at once!!