Well this weekend we continued to march down the road of home improvements. As I have mentioned already our current big project has been the basement. We started with the storage under the stairs. We then moved to the storage room which is through our basement bathroom. All of this was marching towards the conversion of the downstairs bedroom. All week long I have been really nervous about whether we would be ready for action this Sunday. The plan was that my parents would come over and help us with the painting and decorating efforts (more specifics to come on this later, with pictures).
All of this was spurred with the need to make room for our baby arriving in December. It’s very interesting to me all the different perspectives on the decisions that we’ve made. Our house has four bedrooms. When we moved into our house, mere days after I gave birth to Jackson it was easy to decide who would go where. There are 3 bedrooms upstairs and 1 in the basement. So Jeramie and I were obviously in the Master bedroom upstairs. Baylee then occupied the slightly larger of the remaining two bedrooms (she was older). Then Jackson had the other upstairs bedroom. We then set up Jeramie’s old bedroom set in the spare bedroom in the basement for his boys to use 4 nights out of the month. These decisions were all easy ones. Then along came Wyland two years later, whom we bunked up with Jackson in the smaller of the two kids rooms upstairs. It was easier to have the little boys share, rather than switching them with Baylee. Then along comes this baby. It was never really an option to have this baby sleep with Baylee because she would easily take it upon herself to get the baby out of the crib and the such. Not a good situation for her or the baby. When we then found out we were having a boy this made the decision somewhat easier I suppose. There was no way we could put 3 boys in 1 bedroom (the smaller bedroom) while we reserved a perfectly good bedroom in the basement for use 4 nights out of the month. So initially we talked about moving Jackson and Wyland to the basement, however since they both wander into our bedroom most nights this wasn’t a real possibility. This only left us with the option of moving Baylee down there. Even this option has me feeling reservations. But with our expanding family it didn’t take us long to realize there weren’t any other options. Last year for Christmas we had bought Jeramie’s boys some individual futon chairs. They are 14 and 9 years old which is really getting too old to be sharing a queen size bed. To this point though we haven’t put the beds together because we haven’t had room to put them anywhere.
All of this rambling leads me to the purpose of this post. I know that I shouldn’t be bothered by what other people think, what Jeramie and I choose to do with our house is our decision. But it’s a delicate situation. Step kids are TRICKY. There is no question about it. I constantly feel like I’m in this position of damned if you do and damned if you don’t. People don’t like to publicly talk about juggling the step children situation. Questions run through my mind (and I know they’re valid questions) .. things like, “Will Jeramie’s kids feel like they’re being pushed out of THEIR bedroom?” Questions that have verbalized like, “Well why does Baylee get that room .. that’s THE BOYS room?” “Where will the boys sleep now?” I hear the questions being asked and I see the questions on peoples faces.
But really what do people think we’re supposed to do?? Put 3 kids in one room when they live here full time? How do people think that Baylee feels? Does it occur to them that perhaps SHE might feel like she is being pushed out of “the fold”, be banished to the basement, and separated from everyone else? It just kind of makes me mad. I can’t even say that I wish we had a bigger house because really I don’t. I wouldn’t want to try and maintain cleanliness in a bigger home. It’s just so frustrating. I know in my heart that we’re making the right decision. I know that I shouldn’t worry about what other people think, it’s still troublesome to me though. I get tired of being made out to be the bad guy. Why don’t people see the big picture? While I will probably never blog about all my thoughts and feelings on step parenting (reminding people that both Jeramie and I are in that position) for fear of TOTAL condemnation. I just wish that people would look at the big picture sometimes.
On a good note the bedroom turned out AMAZING!! Even better than I imagined. We still have a ton to sort through that is lying all over the place in the bathroom and living room, but I can’t wait to post before and after pictures. Home Depot cut the blinds wrong so we have to take them back to be trimmed some more. So I can’t take accurate “after” pictures just yet. Later this week I hope! Be ready to ooooo and ahhhh!
