Sophia's Big Girl Room

We have been working on Sophia's big girl room for a while but I finally got it all finished, cleaned, and had my camera out at the same time. So here are the pictures. (And remember, my blog is now for posterity so I am not bragging about this, just detailing for Sophia:)

The little white chine cupboard was made for Sophia's great grandmother Ginny by Ginny's grandfather, so it's old. But just the perfect size for all of Ginny's grand kids who have played with it. It holds three different tea sets, all in various stages of completeness. The little play kitchen is what Sophia got for Christmas, though all the girls are loving it (even Kassie).

My friend Courtney gave me this beautiful woman with flowers to thank me for being her friends. Her is the story of why I keep it in Sophia's room: We had been trying for a while to have another baby and had been unsuccessful, which had not been our experience with our first three. Then Courtney got cancer. I stopped focusing on having another baby and started focusing on the Flynn's. Her beautiful girls came to stay with us for a while and so we had six kids in our house for a few weeks! Imagine how surprised I was to find out in the middle of all that, that we were expecting a baby! So I when I see this statue, I think of how something so beautiful (Sophia) came out of something so ugly (cancer). Thank you Courtney:)

The toddler bed has been interesting. Even though she still loved her crib, we were trying to potty train her and she had to be able to get out of bed if she needed to. For the first month or so, she treated it like a crib. She would sit on her bed and yell, "Mom, I'm awake!" Very funny. But lately, she has no problem getting out of bed for whatever strikes her fancy - a drink of icy, cold water, a stuffed animal, another song. But she is potty trained! (Oh, and I made the quilt on her bed because they don't sell that kind of stuff in toddler bed size. I could not for the life of me make my square match up. So I used ribbon to tie it on every corner and it covers up a lot of the mistakes. It is silky pink material on the back side so it's just like Sophia's blanky.)

Now Sophia has her own book shelf filled with all the toddler classics - her current favorites are The Hungry Caterpillar, Are You My Mother, and One Fish Two Fish.
This little music box also belonged to her great grandmother Ginny. When Ginny died, this was the only thing Kassie wanted. She remember sitting on Grandma Ginny's lap and playing with this. Grandma Ginny died the day after Sophia was born so she only saw pictures of Sophia. But we tell her stories all the time. My grammy made this ceramic bear lamp for me when I was a baby. It was in my room with a blue gingham shade and was kept there through my sister and brother. It has been standing guard over all girls, too, but with different shades and bows tied around it's neck. I am not a keeper of things. But this made the cut and Sophia loves it.

On these shelves are some nick knacks that my mom brought back from her travels in Europe. These little nesting dolls came from Poland and Sophia loves to climb up on the chair and play with them. There are five of them and Sophia says it's me, Kassie, Sydney, Caroline, and Sophia. This is a hand carved goose girl from Germany. All the girls got one for their birthdays last year. Kassie got the Frog Prince, Caroline got Red Riding hood, and Sydney got Hansel and Gretel. And don't worry, Mom, the kids are not playing with them, just looking:)

Sophia was out of sorts over the holidays, partly because of all the excitement but partly because of all this change in her room. It's all finished and she has finally settled down. I think we'll keep it this way for a while!