Sophie's Nursery And Farewelling Babyhood

At each stage of babyhood, there have been so many 'lasts' that I've found so very sad... so many moments and memories I've found myself desperately wishing I could freeze and hold onto forever.  When Sophie moved from her bassinette in our bedroom to her own cot at six months, I was devastated.  Ten months later, I felt tears pricking my eyes as I watched her cot leave our house, the same cot that Grace slept in and whose rail she gnawed bite marks into during one particular episode of teething. The same cot I spent many a night sitting beside, patting my girls to sleep and comforting them.  The same cot which I stared at many times during my pregnancies, dreaming of the babies we were yet to meet.

Farewelling that cot seemed so final, a sign that babyhood was well and truly over... and so it was that at sixteen months, our little one began sleeping in her toddler bed.

Slowly, since that day five months ago, Sophie's nursery has been morphing into a toddler room.  The once relatively bare, simple layout and decor beginning to take shape and growing alongside our little girl, coming to life in an effort to match her little character.  One of the blessings of keeping this blog is having a record of our family and our home and so today, I want to freeze time just once and capture Sophie's nursery in its current state before it too becomes a thing of the past and is made-over into a 'big girls' room'...

Sophie's nursery back when she had a cot

I love that Sophie's room (like Grace's) is filled with touches I've crafted with my own hands such as the owl cross-stitch above (Grace has an identical one in blue), cushions, pillowcases and basket liners.  I love that it has pieces from my own childhood (such as the pale pink bed cover) as well as from our family history (the green bunny on Sophie's shelf was a gift of my own Dad's when he was born.

The empty spot on the top shelf above is where I'm hoping to put a clock from my own childhood bedroom... 

I just need to re-claim it from my Mum's house...

With only three months until our little poppet turns two, I'm almost ready to begin sewing a patchwork quilt - a bed cover of pretty fabrics in mint and aqua green, pale pink and grey with touches of red and yellow. Come summer when she moves into a 'big girl's bed', I'm hoping it will be complete.

Other 'toddler touches' are slowly creeping into Sophie's room too, the latest being an adorable wooden doll house (an early birthday present) which Sophie has been playing with every single day recently. Low shelving or a small bookcase beneath the window which I can deck out 'Montessori style' with Sophie's favourite toys and knick knacks is also on the cards and will see me farewelling another well used piece of nursery furniture... the feeding chair...

I guess that's what decorating a house is all about though... nothing will ever stay exactly the same forever as the people living within its walls grow and change... and so as sad as it has been saying goodbye to many much loved baby pieces, I know deep down that in doing so, our house is becoming more of a home and that the chapters of toddler hood and childhood ahead of us will be filled with just as many memories and moments to cherish just as precious as the baby ones we've farewelled.