Ozan's nursery

At long last, I am back in the driver's seat of MelbaBlog, having finished SAT Hell Week. (In the week leading up to the January 26 SAT, my students were in a right tizzy, and I ended up teaching 35 hours just between Monday and Wednesday – which is more than I usually do even in a busy week!) Naturally, our faithful readers are interested more in the impending arrival of our little boy than in my own insignificant travails, so I pass on to: Ozan's nursery, which was completed recently!

Here I have to ask you all to stand and bow to the amazing powers of Meltem, who not only conceived the nursery in broad detail, but also designed the wardrobe herself. Here's a general view of the place:



That there on the right is the Wardrobe of Ultimate Coolness, designed by Meltem herself. It may not look so special from the outside, but the arrangement of shelves and racks inside is something to behold. The puny minds at the furniture place weren't quite up to the task of grasping Meltem's genius, however, so when they came and built the thing it turned out to have overly large shelves and a hanging rack so high Wilt Chamberlain would have had trouble accessing it. Accordingly, Meltem grabbed the phone and cracked a major can of whoop-ass (you may have felt the earth wobble on its access a little). Duly chastened, the guys at the furniture store redid some components and re-established cosmic harmony.

Anyway, the nursery is also stocked for the comfort of both Ozan and his parents. Here you see his crib and the world's most comfortable chair (an IKEA wonder called Poäng):



In case you can't see it too well in the pictures, we went with a puppy theme for the decoration of sheets, furniture, and walls. Therein lies a tale. We spent a long time at the furniture place poring over their sample books and finally discovered a theme we liked, one with happy little puppies smiling cutely at you as butterflies (smiling too, it's a happy world) wing about them. Part of the package was to be a strip of wallpaper we would run around the room to alleviate the boredom of cream-colored concrete walls. To our dismay, it turned out that the manufacturer had stopped producing the puppy design. We got around the problem by having the furniture place scan the sample wallpaper and print the puppies and butterflies on sticky paper. Then we just applied them to the walls ad libitum. We think it looks pretty good:



And doesn't Ozan's crib look like the most comfortable place to park his little baby butt?



The cushion can also be transferred to the table opposite, which will serve both as our work desk (note the bulletin board – flanked by puppies, of course) and as Ozan's changing station (note the diaper-supply basket on the left; we bought a super-package of 96 diapers, which I am told should last a week or so).



So there you have it, your first tour of Ozan's nursery. You're all invited to come see it in person, of course!