The Baby's Room and Other Things, Part I

Well, I am not in the hospital today, so I will share some details from the baby's room. By the way, this website is really funny.

These past two months have felt like a mad dash to the finish line. We literally had nothing in terms of baby equipment when we arrived in Sweden. As someone  who loves to shop, I was completely overwhelmed during the entire process of shopping for baby. Most of the items we purchased were either from IKEA or Blocket - a website in Sweden similar to Craigslist. Since we are subletting the apartment for two years, we had some furniture to work with - the dresser, the nightstand and also the striped beige wall paper that came in this tiny room. I had been wanting that three tiered Råskog kitchen cart from IKEA since it came out a few years ago. I love the functionality of it, and also that it has wheels.

This wall hanging was the inspiration for the room, and I've had my eye on it since my first trimester. It's called Karkuteillä and produced for the iconic Finnish design company Marimekko.

I love it because it's so whimsical and colourful, and I love the fact that the elephant is wearing black cowboy boots - a nod to my daughter's Texas heritage. Interesting side note, in 2012 Jon and I heard the designer of this textile speak in Brussels at a design fair. Her name is Maija Louekari and she's very talented; read more about her here.

Our first purchase for the baby was our stroller. It's a used Bugaboo Cameleon and I love it! I test drove a similar new model at a baby store and really liked the way it "drove."  When Jon found our bright red one on Blocket, I wasn't convinced that it was the "one" because of the colour. As it turns out, I'm so glad we went for a bright colour instead of black, which I feel is too dark for a baby and reminiscent of a funerary car. We took it for a test drive for a picnic back in July. We got a lot of stares - probably because there was no baby in there.

This is Slottsskogen - a huge park in the middle of Göteborg. It was a lovely July evening, and I'm looking forward to going back and exploring with the baby. There's even a small zoo in the park!

Back to the baby's room...

I spent the summer knitting the blanket hanging on the rocking chair. It ended up being rather large for a baby blanket, but I really like the colours and it works well in the room. Every colour on that blanket tells a story. I hope to write more about it later, and also the small quilt in the picnic in the park picture.

Our rocking chair was found second hand on Blocket. We went to pick it up in the centre of town and brought it back on the tram. Jon carried it all the way home on his head. Here I am waiting for the tram, in front of a burger. I think this is a funny picture.

We also found our bedside crib on Blocket, but we went to a store to make this purchase. It's new but was priced much lower than advertised in other stores. The store owner even delivered it to our house after hours at no charge when she saw Jon try to roll it out of the store on a toddler sized skate board. Have I mentioned how kind everyone is in Sweden?

The Troll bedside crib also has wheels that lock, and one of the sides slides down for easy access. This crib can be placed next to our bed and I feel great about using it in our room the first few months. I love the bedding pictured here in the crib. At the moment it's only for decoration, but it was one of the first gifts for baby purchased at Petit Pan in Paris. Ooh-la-la!

The nice thing about these larger pieces is that we can easily move them into our room where baby will sleep the first few months. We have a nice corner space in our bedroom ready to arrange what ever items we find that we'll need. We're flexible and thankfully the furniture is too!

It was a bit of work to get everything organised, but I feel really good about the purchases we've made for baby thus far. We didn't go overboard and I feel like this arrangement will function well for us, but only time will tell.

Part II tomorrow...maybe.