Playroom Makeover

Baby 4 is official. He's being released from the hospital and coming into care in 3 days. I still don't know what level of care he'll require, but I'm going to start shadowing his medical team tomorrow morning after his parents are told about his placement. The senior intake caseworker called me Friday and said, "You're a nurse, right?" Nope, not even close. She told me that they are starting to feed him by mouth, but with a 4yr old's haste he's not chewing properly and has aspirated quite a few times. She told me I needed to have current CPR certification before we could take him home. It's not her fault, but I could have been doing that for the past 2 weeks instead of rushing around trying to find a class on the weekend before I need it. Ugh! The red cross was holding an all-day training on Tuesday, but I need to be in the hospital as much as possible before 4 comes home so I get comfortable with his needs. Thankfully my good friend, Carla, knew to check the American Heart Association for online classes. They do in fact have online CPR training that was very helpful and convenient. I did it yesterday and I just have to do my skills assessment at the training facility tomorrow to be certified for 2yrs. I gather from other foster parent blogs I read that other agencies make foster parents be CPR certified no matter what kids are placed with them, but our county does not. Hopefully they reimburse the cost of training though ($65?!?!).

This week was particularly boring for us so we did a little math. Turns out:

Time + Tax return $ = Home Improvement Projects.

We decided to tackle our upstairs bathroom which is an eyesore and occasionally leaks in various places. 27 minutes into our trip to Home Depot, we realized we didn't have to foggiest idea how to fix our bathroom. So we turned our sights to setting up a playroom that can also be used as a therapy room for Baby 4!

Before

We have a room off the kitchen that we were calling a breakfast nook. It held an extra dining set that was only used when we had more than 6 people over for dinner. We'll call that three times/year. When we bought the house that room was going to be the homeschool room. Since we can't homeschool kids in care, we won't need a homeschool room for a while. This room was just begging for a makeover. It said, "Let your family bring their plates to the living room if the dining room table is full. Please make me pretty!".

So we stripped it down to a hanging window plant and  subfloor

Picked up rosewood colored laminate

Brandon painted the walls a creamy yellow and installed the floor

Time for some more math!!

Adult seating + Kids seating + Awesome playmat + Toy Storage = BEST PLAYROOM EVER

Adult Seating

Kids Seating (Thank you Carla)



Awesome Playmat



Toy Storage

Best Playroom Ever

My only contribution to this room was shopping for the curtains, and I brought along a friend to help me with that. Brandon is the playroom master. I can't wait to see Baby 4 play in it!! The best part is that we can still have people eat in there if need be, I can blog in there while the kids play, AND it will transition easily to a homeschool room when we are ready for that.