Three year old C has four siblings – H, J, E and now, Baby G.

H, J and E all have the last name “Granju.” This is also my last name, which I kept after my divorce from H, J and E’s father.

However, C’s father, my husband Jon has the last name “Hickman,” as do C and now, G. But C is insistent that G’s last name MUST be “Granju.” I couldn’t figure out why she was so adamant about this until I realized that to her, ALL siblings have the name “Granju.” That’s just how it is to her – if you are her sister or brother, your last name must be Granju. So she is baffled by the fact that her new baby sister has a different last name than her other siblings. She just seems to find this very, very wrong.

She’ll get it figured out eventually, I guess

I’ve already blogged here and here about the room makeover that my sister, other family members, dear friends, and the incredibly kind folks from a wonderful organization called Special Spaces, have been working on for G and C.

Well, today was phase 2 of The Big Reveal, and it TOTALLY KNOCKED MY SOCKS OFF!!!!

Check it out:

First, here is the room before these crazy-nice folks got hold of it. As you can see, it was awful – just an oversized junk closet with dirty white walls, ugly BLACK trim and terrible lighting. We had no furniture or curtains, etc. It was seriously fugly. Here is some photographic evidence of just how nasty it was.

And here is a little video tour of the pre-renovation room that I made last fall for my friend Heather because she had offered to give me some design inspiration on what to do with the space. (She did give me some great ideas for what we might do in the room, but of course, at that time I had no idea that I would soon be unexpectadly pregnant with G, or that our family’s whole world was going to shift on its axis, meaning that the last thing we had time or money to do would be to renovate a bedroom.)

Now, here are some pics from today’s BIG REVEAL. The room is now mostly complete, minus the rug – which has been ordered but hasn’t come yet – and a few other finishing touches like the glider and the window seat, which is being built. But everything is pretty much done. The previously dirty white walls full of holes and badly patched drywall are now a wonderful robin’s egg blue, while the old black trim is now a sweet, pink-hued white. The 1950s canopy bed was a hand me down from my mother, who recently moved and gave my sibs and me quite a bit of her furniture. The dresser and changing table were second hand and each was its own kind of awful-looking before J and E’s stepmother, M got hold of them and painted them. Now they look like something out of a Pottery Barn catalog. M also found the sweet bedside table for the room at a garage sale. Last, but certainly not least, all of the custom fabric work in the room – drapes, comforter, pillows and shams, bedskirt, new canopy for the bed, etc – was made up for the room by the sweet folks at Special Spaces, using fabrics and design picked out by my sister and our friend B (who happens to be a wonderful pro photographer – check out these pix she did of my sister’s children.)

Isn’t the room AWESOME???!!!! I was so excited when I saw it. And C loves her new room so much that she spends every free minute in there, including sleeping in there on her own.

Here is a shot of the room with the drapes closed. They are insulated, which will really help to keep the room’s temperature stable, since those giant picture windows have been huge energy sucks.

Freshly painted dresser with gorgeous, hand-painted mural hanging above it.

NC checks out the new canopy bed. She gave it her unqualified stamp of toddler approval.



Atwork for the girls created by their 11 year old cousin E. The frames were also garage sale finds from M.

Another view of the room.

The glass door with the transom above it will be covered by a custom Roman shade, which will match the rest of the fabric. The shade isn’t quite finished yet though.

Happy birthday today to my beautiful C. I can’t believe it’s been three years already. Your birth was one of the most grueling experiences of my life, but also one of the most satisfying.

I am so proud of what a brilliant, bookish, articulate, quirky, creative, loving and expansively sweet person you are. You are a delight, and have brought so much joy to our entire family. I know that your third year has not been an easy one. You have already experienced change and loss that many adults have not yet faced.

But the next year will be gentler for you…for all of us. I promise.

And your big brother Henry loved you very, very much. Never, ever doubt that…or forget it.

I think G is up to close to 6 pounds now. Woohoo!

And although she appears to have brown eyes instead of blue, she looks pretty much exactly like big sister C as a newborn.

(And she has notably looooong fingers and toes, just like Henry)

C is a very sweet-natured, easygoing two year old in general. But she’s been through A LOT in the past 10 months – too much. As a testament to her naturally easy going temperament, she held it together through my hospitalization last fall (we hadn’t ever been separated that much – not by a longshot) and then through the nearly 4 months that I was barely functional and often in bed due to killer “morning” sickness. She was calm and patient as I next spent five solid weeks at Henry’s bedside in the hospital, meaning she was separated from me constantly and when we were together, I was distracted, worried and sad. Then, on May 31, she lived through the devastating death of her oldest brother and the grief that enveloped our household, including seeing me essentially take to my bed for two weeks.

After that, only a few weeks later, her baby sister was born at only 35 weeks . G’s early birth by c-section meant that I spent 5 days in the hospital with the new baby, once again separated from C, who is still a baby herself. It’s just been far too much for anyone to handle, much less a toddler. Now, finally, C is not holding it together so well. She’s understandably showing the strain of everything our family has been through since last October.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s exceptionally sweet directly toward her baby sister. It’s toward the REST of us that she’s is showing her frustration. For the first time ever, she’s kicking and hitting at her cousins, her older siblings and at Jon and me. She’s throwing real, honest to goodness temper tantrums for the first time. She’s whining like crazy (although that’s starting to let up some). She’s just REALLY, REALLY mad and she’s obviously finally letting off some pent-up steam – some very, very pent-up steam.

My sister pointed out the other day that I was being too snappish with her when she melts down, so I am now trying much harder to be as gentle and understanding as I can be. Jon and I are also working hard to normalize her daily routine after so much uncertainty and being shuffled around in recent months. But she just doesn’t have the words or the emotional resources to explain to us how stressed she’s been, so falling apart is all she can do. Dealing with her tantrums and anger have been trying for the rest of us in the family in the past two weeks, but I hope that finally letting it all out is giving her some relief. I am very proud of how sweet and patient E and J are being with her, even when she’s being really cranky with them.

Henry (age 3) was really furious when J came home from the hospital. He developed a weird nervous tic for several months and for a short time, he literally refused to look at me or speak to me any time I was holding his little sister. After about a month or so, he fell in love with her and after that, they were always as close as two siblings could be. Then, both Henry (age 6 at the time) and J (age 2) were just thrilled when E was born. They never showed any stress to speak of. The three of them became a tight unit for the next decade. My three babies – for many years, I never imagined there would be a fourth or a fifth!

I have to admit that I was REALLY worried when C was born in 2007 because she was a newcomer to that threesome of siblings who were now 15, 12 and 9 years old. During my pregnancy with C, Henry and J were not happy AT ALL that I was having a new baby. In fact, all three musketeers were incredibly embarrassed at the idea that their mom was having a baby NINE YEARS after the last baby joined the family. Henry was flat out angry about it – something about which I felt terribly guilty at the time. Once C arrived, however, J and E were immediately smitten with their little sister. It took Henry a while to come around. But once C could babble and reach for him, he began to melt; he totally fell for his baby sister. And she was just nuts about Henry. C loved him very much.

Now we’ve brought G home only 34 months after C joined our family (yes, she is definitely our last)… And Henry is gone – he just missed his newest baby sister in this time zone. But I know they will see one another again, and I like to think that they were together before she was born. On the day Henry died, I sat on his bed with his feet and legs in my lap and felt G kick against them, through my very pregnant belly. On that day, the two of them were connecting physically for the first and only time. As their mother, this was both beautiful and terrible for me to experience, but they touched each other. That will always be meaningful to me.

But back to poor C….she’s just completely overwhelmed at the moment.

Did your toddler melt down when a new baby came home? Tell me about it and tell me how you helped him or her through the transition. I’d love to hear from others who have dealt with their own Very Angry Toddler.

After the cousins came over to set off fireworks on the 4th of July at Casa Hickju, C got right down to business cleaning up the mess. She does not like messes. She seemed to really love the fireworks though, which kind of surprised me, since she hates loud noises in general.

Me to toddler: “C, what are you doing over there near the bassinet?”

C responds: “I’m shining this bright flashlight in my baby sister’s face because it helps her sleep.”

If you had told me last Friday that by THIS Friday I’d be home with a new baby, I would have scoffed. Sure, there were definite signs that pointed to the baby coming early, but somehow I just couldn’t wrap my head around the possibility. I was focused on the 13th as a delivery date – which still would have been 2.5 weeks early. But of course, my body had other plans. And here we are!

Bringing G home was as momentous and joyous as it always is when you carry that new family member across the threshhold for the first time. The sun was shining and the sky was blue as Jon slowly drove us the five minutes home from the hospital, with me riding in the back with her to make sure she didn’t flop completely over in the car seat. As you can see, at only 5 lbs, G hasn’t quite grown into her carseat. (The eagle-eyed among you will also notice that in my exhausted state, I fastened the leg straps completely wrong, but thankfully, Jon caught my mistake.)

When we arrived home, my mother and MG (my three older kids’ wonderful stepmother) were there to greet us. They had cleaned our house from top to bottom, and MG had filled the rooms with fresh daisies and hydrangeas. Big hugs were exchanged all around, and we went inside, where I quickly became overwhelmed by emotion: gratitude for G and her safe arrival, sadness over the family member who is now missing from our home, and a sense of profound relief that after nearly two months of being inside of hospitals (or anticipating being inside a hospital again), I was home.

My new mantra: NO MORE HOSPITALS.

The first thing I did when I got inside the house was beg to be allowed to look at the newly redone bedroom that my sister, MG our dear friend and neighbor JR and numerous other little helper elves have been secretly working on for weeks. The bedroom was a first floor junk room (understatement) that attaches to our bedroom through the only full bathroom in the house.  Ever since we bought the house in 2006, we have intended to renovate this rundown, junk-filled room into a first floor bedroom for C. Once we found out we were expecting G, we REALLY wanted to get the room finished in time for the baby’s arrival – thinking that C could then transition to a big girl bed in a real bedroom before the baby moved into our bed. Also, at this point, C has a lot of toys and books, etc and without a room for them, they have just been scattered all over the house. However, time and finances prevented us from doing a single thing to make the room liveable during my entire pregnancy.

Then, while Henry was hospitalized, and it looked like we would be bringing home a child with major physical disabilities, I began thinking about how I would instead get that room cleaned out, painted and made handicapped accessible before Henry was released from rehab. As the only first floor bedroom other than ours, that was the logical space to prepare a room for Henry. Plus, since it’s attached to our bedroom, I wouldn’t have been far from him at night, which would have been reassuring for me.

My sister and I began talking about what would need to be done to this room in order to make it wheelchair friendly, etc. before Henry came home, but then Henry got worse…and then he died. After May 31st, even thinking about doing anything to the room just made me sad and seemed overwhelming. I gave up on the idea of doing anything to it until some far future date; I certainly saw no way to find the time or resources to do a single thing to it before the baby arrived.

But it turns out that Betsy was secretly getting folks organized to renovate the room for us before G arrived. She quietlychose paint colors, fabrics for the curtains and for the canopy on the vintage canopy bed that my mother had given us when she moved from her house, etc, etc, etc. She quietly asked family members and friends to give her Target and Lowe’s gift cards as baby gifts so to pay for all the work the room needed. And then, while I was in the hospital for four days after my c-section, our dear friend and neighbor JR, along with my older kids’ stepmom, MG, worked their TAILS OFF cleaning the junk from the room, scraping and prepping, painting, repairing a broken window and so on. MG hit garage sales to find an end table to match the bed that we had, and she painted the old, ugly dresser and changing table that we had used for C. Betsy continued getting things measured for fabrics and choosing accessories.

By this time, I knew that something was happening with the room, but I had NO IDEA of the extent of the work that Betsy, JR, MG and various other friends were putting into it while I was hospitalized with the baby. Trust me, this room was a terrible wreck before I left the house on Sunday to give birth, and the idea that it could be transformed so completely in less than one week was inconceivable to me.

But when Jon and I got home from the hospital with the baby yesterday afternoon, I was dying to see what they had done. Suffice it to say that I was TOTALLY unprepared for how radically changed this room was. When they opened the door and showed me, my jaw hit the floor. This formerly junk-filled, dirty, rundown room with peeling paint and holes in the walls had been made over into THE most beautiful, peaceful little girls’ room that I’ve ever seen. The walls are a gorgeous robin’s egg blue. The trim is a beautiful, high gloss white. The windows were repaired and the closet was cleaned, freshly painted and organized with beautiful new wicker toy baskets. The new canopy bed was set up and the other, previously banged up and ugly furniture had been made over into shabby chic adorable with MG’s mad decorative paint skillz. I could NOT BELIEVE how gorgeous it was, and this is before any of the fabrics are finished for the canopy, curtains, bedding, etc. It’s a magical, amazing room for C and G to share as they grow up, and I can’t believe that my wonderful friends and family pulled off such a makeover miracle in less than one week.

Here are a few photos of the room that I took when I first had the big reveal yesterday. They aren’t very high quality because I took them with my BlackBerry. I will get some better ones as soon as I get a few minutes. And my sister keeps reminding me that it will be even prettier once the new wall sconces and light fixture are installed, the rug she’s ordered arrives, and the curtains, canopy etc are all up. But I have to say that I think it looks pretty amazing now. I can’t believe I have a nice place to change G and such a beautiful, peaceful space for C to play and (eventually) sleep. The room is so lovely and the transformation is so radical that I can’t stop going back in there just to look

C and NC already loooooove the new room.