It's A Girl

Julia Avery Thompson is here. In fact, she's been here for 10 days now. She is the beautiful, black-haired, big-cheeked daughter of my sister, Marcy and her black-haired, big-cheeked husband, Tre. (Do you see a pattern here?) She arrived on February 7th - a Thursday - and I could not be present for her arrival. So...I did what any normal person would do - I begged them not to tell me one little detail until I could get there on Friday - not the sex, not the weight, not the name - nothing. Because in my family, we don't find out what our babies are until they are this side of the womb. It's somewhat controversial in this nursery decorating and monogrammed gift giving world that we live in, but it works for us. We like surprises! And I didn't wait 9 months for somebody to call me on the telephone and give me the details.

So I arrive in Birmingham the next night and I'm walking through the halls of the hospital checking out the blue and pink bows on the doors. And I'm thinking....I don't want to find out what this baby is by way of the door bow. As I approach Marcy's room, I am elated to see the naked door...a no-go-on-the-bow, if you will. Excellent. I open the door, expecting to see pink or blue ribbons or balloons or something. No, it is the most sterile room I have ever laid eyes upon....except for the blinding smiles of my sister, my mother, and Haley (my sister's sister-in-law). And there she is....the bundle of joy, swaddled in a blanket with the traditional blue and pink stripped baby hat. I take the baby and practically assault it trying to get it de-swaddled so I can find out who she/he is at long last. But all I see is white...just like those crazy (almost evil) smiles on those around me. She is dressed in white from head to toe. Ya'll. They made me go to the diaper to check parts. Parts is parts, but there was definitely one part missing. IT'S A GIRL!!!! We haven't had a girl on my side of the family for a while - 7 years to be exact. And the name, well, it was my grandmother's. And you know how we love my grandmother. (As a side note, I wanted to name my child Julia, but after I married Richy that became impossible. I was not going to have a Julia Roberts...wasn't gonna happen. Also, both of my children have "parts", so apparently, God made that decision easy for me.)

The next day we performed the most incredible "Extreme Nursery Makeover"! We turned the neutral nursery with its green walls and yellow bee bedding into a suite fit for a princess. Fortunately, Tre's mom, Shelayne, happens to be a decorator - which comes in handy when you are trying to rebuild Rome in a day. It also helped matters that the next door neighbor, Amanda, had some extra pink toile crib bedding and she monograms on the side. OK....she was a big piece of the nursery puzzle. The crib bedding - that was HUGE, but at 10:00 that night she is monogramming the window treatments with Julia's initials. I love it when a plan comes together!!

Ahhh, it was a lovely weekend! Thank you to my husband for staying home with our children so I could spend that time with my sister. I'm thinking that Extreme Nursery Makeover would not have happened had Richmond and Knox been on the scene. Or Julia would have had her room decorated with Mater and Lightning McQueen with some touches of Spiderman. Yes, all hail to Richy! It was a special time...

Here's hoping that Julia will forgive me when she's old enough to realize that it took me 10 days to blog her arrival into this world. But by then, she'll know me. And by then, she'll know she was lucky it was only 10 days and not 10 years! And she'll forgive me....because she had the cutest nursery E-V-E-R!