Know the Sex, Start the Nursery

With all the excitement of the ultrasound on Tuesday, I forgot to mention that, while home visiting my parents this past weekend, I found and purchased some nursery furniture (two cribs and a combo dresser).  It was just one of those situations where everything aligned and I decided to go with it.  Now, I must admit, I'm a little picky about things (OK, a-lotta-picky), especially when it comes to home decor and furniture.  A few weeks ago, I visited USA Baby in Richmond and loved basically all the furniture there... but of course, that's because most were solid wood and cost ALOT.  Everything I have looked at since has just seemed cheap.  I've been to BRU, Target, and finally Baby Depot (aka Burlington Coat Factory).  Walking around Baby Depot, I had that same feeling (i.e. the feeling of "This is all crap that will not stand up to a baby, let alone the test of time to be able to use the convertible crib for its full purpose").  Then, I turned the corner, and there is was...

The Suite BeBe Hampshire collection.  I fell in love.  It has darker wood like I love, but it also has a very slight cherry color to it, which made it different.  It was made pretty solid, and I couldn't get enough of it.  Plus, I got a 20% off discount on one of the cribs for having twins, and I had a coupon for 15% off the dresser, so I saved about $200 total... AND it was in stock.  Granted, we were 3 hours away from my home and my hubby wasn't there (though I did send him pics and links so he would see and approve), but my dad picked it up in his truck and will be bringing it to us the last week of June.  I. CANNOT. WAIT.

The room we will be using as the nursery is pretty small (9x10, currently our office), so I'm thinking we will start with one crib and wait to set up the second one.  Right now, we live in a townhouse that we rent.  Even though we have been in Northern VA for 5 years now, and have looked into purchasing a home about 3 times over those 5 years, it really just wasn't possible (and boy am I glad we didn't buy, since I'm seeing how much housing costs dropped for my friend's who did buy during the housing peak... some are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars and are essentially stuck). 

While we knew we could afford to buy, we didn't want to be "house poor", plus we have been discussing (for the better part of 3 years) leaving Nova to be closer to friends and family, by moving to the Ric.  The trouble is finding a new job, but we have decided, we are making the move... the "plan" (in quotes because plans never seem to work for us) is to spend the last month or so of pregnancy and hopefully my maternity leave looking for jobs (I'm probably not being realistic, but oh well).  I'll return to work around January (assuming they do not come too early) and keep up the search.  Our lease ends in February or March, and hopefully, by then, I'll have found another job and we can get outta here.  Luckily hubby doesn't have to find another job as he can work remotely from home.  Its me holding us up at this point, so fingers crossed it will work.  I'm hoping that even if I don't find something before our lease ends, we could still make the move due to the lower cost of living based off my husband's pay, but that isn't ideal and I would like to avoid that.  Two paychecks is better than one!

Sooo why am I tell you all this?  Well, basically because my dream nursery is gonna have to wait.  Since we hopefully won't be in the townhouse for very long after the babies are born, I'm going to hold off on painting and hanging things.  I will plan to have it all purchased and ready, but I will just have to wait on completing the final project for a little while.  It makes me a little down, since I feel like I'll be itching to do stuff during the nesting period, but I just don't want to have to deal with painting everything back to white before we leave.

Anyway, this post ended up longer than I had anticipated, so I'm going to forego my discussion of nursery themes and colors for right now.