Whilst I was still pregnant, I kept seeing photos and videos of people who were due at around the same time as me, or just before, or just after!, having finished their child's nursery. At the time I was naively thinking we would have plenty of time to sort it when we moved, then when we moved and I was basically useless for anything it was thinking that we would have time when he arrived to get the nursery done before he moved in there. Now when I think that the only thing I think is about the bit in Billy Elliot where the dance teacher says 'The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow. Fat. Chance.'
This isn't to say that nothing in the nursery was done. The cot was put together well in advance and we had an over the cot changing mat in place as well as the obligatory IKEA changing table. There's a slight difference in height which makes a big difference to my back in terms of pain and thankfully the separate table is better for my back, because the over the cot one has had to come off now he's sleeping in there and I'm not picking it up every time he needs a change, because he needs a change a lot...
We got an IKEA cabinet in there as a second wardrobe, sorted out the first wardrobe and have changed it around a few times too depending on where we were up to with different things we were trying (like having to have the wet bags handy when we were still using reusable nappies), but the walls are still white, the wallpaper is still half torn down and the carpet is still full of marks and splashes of things that happened before we bought the house.
Our nursery is far from picture perfect, and it's actually far from functionally perfect. There's a few steps between the nursery and the bathroom, and a long way between the nursery and the sink in our room, so any messy hands take a while to get clean. It's also a long trek through the majority of the house in order to get to the bin with any bags of nappies. Honestly I have told my partner that I would love to put a sink in there, which wouldn't be too hard really, but it's not something we're going to do immediately. The thing I would love to do immediately though is put something of a very small slide tube down from the window... and then park a bin under it. Maybe it's just me and having something against the Tommy Tippee bin that Amazon seem to think every parent wants, but I don't like them and there are some things even scented bin liners can't fix or help. On those days, I wish it was possible to just throw everything straight out of the window into a tube that passed down right into the outside bin.
The problem with this, of course, is a lid, and the fact we live in the country side and near a river so foxes, rats and other rodents...
I don't think the nursery will ever be 'finished' until we are done having kids, and therefore done having a nursery in our house at which point it won't be the nursery that's done, but our nursery era, partly because of how we both are and our need to reorganise, but also because our son is young and developing and that constant growth and change means what he needs from the room is changing and evolving. We have to change things to keep him safe, move things so he can get to and use them, and move other things because he's either past them or bored of them. Some things are there waiting for him to be ready for them and some things are just stored because we don't need them anymore, but we're planning to, or at least hoping to, have another kid at some point, so we need to keep them somewhere and ideally not forget we have them!!
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