On Furnishing a Boy's Room

I realize that some people actually visit this blog to find tips on raising a boy...or in my case, raising many boys at once. So today I thought I'd offer some advice on room furnishings.

First, and most essential, is the baby bed. For your first child, I advise spending days on end visiting various high-end furniture dealers searching for the safest, most esthetically pleasing baby bed that exists in the world. Ask your dealer to find out if the entire bed is made of quality hardwood. Check all joinings and fittings. Make sure you can lower the side with one hand -- easily, and quietly so as not to disturb your precious bundle as he sleeps. Find the perfect bed that matches all the criteria you have found through internet research and the 15 baby books you purchased the day you found out you were pregnant. Discover it costs more than your first car. Justify the expense because it converts to a toddler, then twin bed. This bed will last Junior through college! It is, in fact, a bargain. And it comes with the world's hardest crib mattress...the one most recommended by experts for the prevention of SIDS -- primarily because it is so uncomfortable, your child will never actually sleep on it. Purchase coordinating changing table and dresser, as well as matching rocker by refinancing your house.

Next, comes crib linens, window treatments and a rug. Agonize over color choices and fabric textures. Convince yourself that your child's sleep/wake cycle depends on making the correct choice in bumper pads and matching valance. Spend an exorbitant sum on fabric and a sewing machine so you can "feather your nest" yourself. Spend even more money on fabric and labor when you give up and hand the job over to a professional. Choose a rug with a design that speaks to your heart. And look! Coordinating wall prints are available!!

Agonize over your registry. Solid sheets or prints? Wipe warmer or decorative wipe cover? Ooh and aah over every gift, but secretly resent anyone who buys you anything not on your registry. You've spent months researching the safest, most educationally sound items, for heaven's sake!

Purchase a beautiful, wicker toy basket yourself. Artfully arrange baby's new stuffed animals -- as well as some of your most treasured toys from childhood -- within the basket. It's the final touch that gives your child's room a certain je-ne-sais-quoi.

Finally, it's time to bring junior home from the hospital. Bring him lovingly into the cozy sanctuary you've made. All the time, effort and expense was worth it just for this perfect moment. Savor it. Take a picture.

Over the next year, Junior will:

1) Refuse to sleep on the rock you call a mattress. (Before the year is out you will have added a double thick mattress pad, countless toys and *gasp!* maybe even a pillow...all in the vain hope that your beloved will for-the-love-of-all-that-is-holy SLEEP already!!!)

2) Use the bumper pads as a step ladder to climb out of his bed forcing their removal and subsequent exile to the garage.

3) Chew the length of the bed rail until it looks like an old #2 pencil.

4) Come down with stomach flu in the middle of the night and completely defile that beautiful rug (if only you'd known red Gatorade contained a permanent dye).

5) Compel you, through countless disgusting acts that I won't detail here, to place a container of wipes in each and every room of your house -- decorative covers be damned.

6) Escape during a diaper change, pull up to his lovely wicker toy box, and proceed to relieve himself all over its contents -- including that toy monkey you've treasured for as long as you can remember.


When furnishing a room for a 2nd, 3rd or 4th child, my advice is simple. Whatever you can't beg, borrow or steal, you then purchase on clearance at various discount houses -- my favorites are Babies R Us, Wal-Mart and Target. Matching is optional and generally accidental.

Good luck and best wishes!