Paint and contractions

Jessica and I took the girls to the MGM Grand to see the lions yesterday. It was chaos. I will never do that again: the next time we all go downtown, Tim will be with us to help maintain order. Two adults, a three-year old, a two-year old, a 22-mo old, and a 3-mo old...the ratio of adults to children was not nearly high enough, and at the end I was concerned I was going to go into labor at the Rainforest Cafe.

Right after we got to the lions, Lucy decided she needed to eat, so we all hiked over to some tables and set up shop. Then a waitress informed us that we couldn't sit there because some of us were clearly under 21. She mentioned that we could sit on the "wall" near the Rainforest Cafe just around the corner. The wall turned out to be not entirely sit-on-able, so Jess fed Lucy her bottle while standing up. She's talented, and Lucy is a patient baby.

During Lucy's lunch, Kate pretended she could no longer hear a word I said and disobeyed all commands. Claire was not much better, and I had a lot of difficulty trying to be in two places at once and maintain sight of both children. We decided that we needed to just eat lunch at the Rainforest Cafe to save our sanity, and all was well for a short time. Claire and Tempie were very interested in the surroundings, and loved waving at the butterflies and leopards on the walls and in the trees. Kate, not so much. She kept getting out of her chair and wandering around the restaurant. At the end of lunch, I'd had enough and strapped her into the stroller. This caused much shrieking (the kind where all patrons look at you, embarrassed) and yelling by Kate.

Last night I woke up at 1am with a severe abdomen cramp, and began to worry that I was going into labor. It finally subsided about 20 minutes later, and I slept okay the rest of the night. We were supposed to all go to Mandalay Bay's Shark Reef today, but I'm still feeling a little weird, so we're hanging out at home.

Now for the paint:

Kate and Claire's room.


Nursery. I went with 'Treasured Jade' on the accent wall. I LOVE it.


Our room. The wall behind the headboard is a darker shade of brown (Fawn's Leap by Ralph Lauren) than the other walls, but it's sort of hard to tell in pictures.

More design questions

Since the upstairs is a mess (not to mention the kitchen), I am making it into an opportunity to get some more painting done. Several months ago we had the majority of the interior painted:

Here you can see the 2 main colors we've chosen for the living spaces: the darker shade on the left wall and the lighter shade in the TV cove. Pay no attention to the hole in the ceiling, or the hideous vertical blinds on the sliding glass door.

We didn't paint the bedrooms or the girls' bathroom, in hopes that we could save up and get it done at a later date. It's later, and now that Kate's room and the bathroom are semi-destructed, I want to get the rest of the house done. Here's my dilemma: I have no idea how long we will be here and therefore it's probably best to paint in tones that will maximize our resale potential. Kate has a red bed and will hopefully be getting some new black-brown dressers soon. More on that in a moment. Claire will be permanently sharing Kate's room with her as soon as the mess is cleaned up, and the baby will have its own room.

Question 1: what color do I paint Kate's room? I am leaning towards the lighter shade that is in the TV cove because she already has some bright colored furniture, and also her room is on the northish side of the house and I don't want to go too dark.

Question 2: what color do I paint the nursery? I have never been a fan of baby blue, so I won't do that unless one of you can come up with an extremely compelling reason to do so. We don't know the gender of the baby, so I also don't want to go with pink (this would potentially create resale issues later, anyway). Do I go with the same light color?

Our room is above the family room, and I am pretty sure I am going with the darker color in there, since we get a lot of sun, and I want some variety upstairs. I think we'll do a darker brown accent wall (suede if the painters can create the look without significant cost to our retirement fund) in Fawn's Leap, on the wall where our headboard is.

Isn't this a nice picture? Lots going on.

Question 3: has anyone recently purchased furniture from Ikea? I found some decent looking furniture that I think will go with Kate's room, and the price is good. My other option is Target furniture and I think they have a crap selection right now. I just can't justify spending a gazillion dollars on dressers and such for pre-schoolers. I am leaning towards 2 dressers and a nightstand, since each child likely needs a dresser and Claire will be losing hers to the baby soon. There is no Ikea near us, so I have to buy sight-unseen. Please help!

Disregard the mess, and pick a color

Kate's room is still in total disarray, mostly because I haven't purchased any additional furniture for her yet, beyond the prized red bed. Don't even ask about bedding at this point. I am undecided as to which color of wood looks better with the red: the light (crib color), or the dark (dresser color). Which one do you like best?