14-Inch Mistakes

With each kid, I realize more and more that I'm a decorator. I love to pick out fabrics and get exactly what I see in my head. I LOVE everything we did when we were expecting Cooper. I loved the painting Todd did, and I loved working on all the surfboards and sewing the bumper and all the rest. In fact, Cooper is still IN those things, which could be an issue. He's not ready to be out of a crib, although I know that by home assignment this coming February, I'll need to get him ready for a "real" bed.

In the meantime, though, a friend here in South Africa gave us her antique crib (SIDS advocates, don't panic, promise, it'll be okay). She used it for her kids, but her youngest is 3 now and no longer needs it. I love the dark stain, I love that it has a removal side, and I love that it's four-poster. Before Em was born, I was a serious proponent of the ideas behind helping a baby soothe them-self to sleep, be in their own room, and all the rest. After getting two kids (JUST 2) out of infancy, I'm convinced that there are just as many temperaments and sleep patterns for infants as there are books about getting an infant to sleep well. I gave up on trying to use books to figure my kids out, and I was so much more... settled when I did. So with this one, I've thrown in the towel before beginning the race! I'm not going to try and fight to get this baby to sleep in his/her own crib in his/her own room because... well, I'm out of rooms. And, it takes me forever to fall asleep again once I've had to get up in the middle of the night to feed and then put a kid back down. So, I'm following my friend's advice, and I took the one side off the crib. It'll be pushed up against my side of the bed at night as a modified co-sleeper type. The only problem is, if babe is asleep, but Todd or I want to read or have the light on, that might cause issues. So I bought some black-out curtaining and have been working for three days to make a canopy cover. I figured this way, I can close off the babe (especially since our room is the brightest room in the house!) and still have use of the bedroom. I stumbled across a really cheap duvet a few months after we got here, but I didn't know what I was going to do with it. I've also carted some khaki curtains my folks bought for me when I was 19 from California to Illinois, then to Kansas, and now to South Africa. They've served as everything from curtains to pillows to table cloths, and now on to canopy cover.

But, as always, there's a fatal flaw. I measured from the bottom of the front green valance instead of from the top railing. So now, I'm three days into work, exhausted and sick of looking at this khaki/green/teal conglomeration of fabric, and I have to go back and fix my 14-inch mistake. Sometimes, life feels like it's a series of 14-inch mistakes all piled up on top of each other. You say the wrong thing, at the wrong time, or to the wrong person. You get to the grocery store check out only to realize you don't have your wallet. You go to change a kid's diaper only to discover that you grabbed a diaper bag that didn't get packed after it's last use. But what I'm coming to realize is that even though you made a mistake, a 14-inch mistake which shouldn't be that big of a deal, but after so much work seems monumental, it doesn't take away the work you put in. Often times with my kids, I wonder if they'll ever "get" the lesson I'm trying to teach them, and when they don't, again, it's like another 14-inch mistake after so much work. But the work is laying a foundation, and just because they didn't say "please" or forgot to wash their hands, it doesn't mean that some day they won't... and when that day comes, I'll forget about all of those 14-inch mistake moments when I felt like a failure because the time, the energy, the work will have all been worth it.