Roman's Room

{Click on all photographs to enlarge}

I've promised pix of Roman's Room to so many people and I'm so sorry its taken so long! Roman's room took awhile to become "decorated". Although his room was painted & the furniture was in 7 months before he arrived and his comforter was ordered 8 months prior and his canvas was ordered 9 months prior... it still took awhile for the rest of it to fall into place. We revolved the whole room around that "A-Z Around the World" canvas from Land of Nod. I found it almost 2 years ago when we started researching adoption and thought we were headed towards adopting a little girl from China. Even when we switched gears towards Russia, I knew that canvas would go in that child's room and so when we found out Roman was from St. Petersburg and that was the "S", we were so happy about our artwork choice. I bought his bedding from Pottery Barn Kids and couldn't believe how well the gingham & stripes in the design went with the canvas. We painted Roman's room blue in August 2007 and headed to Nebraska Furniture Mart to select his furniture. We had a PBK activity/train table sitting in our model home since 2004 and it was just collecting dust. We opted to move it to our house so a nice piece like that could get some use. {When we need a train table again for the model, we'll opt for a cheaper one!} The yellow chair was purchased for 75 buckaroos from my friend Susanne. Funny thing about that chair is that I was always in love with her big stuffed yellow rocker in her kids' nuseries. I had always meant to ask her where she got that chair because I wanted one just like it. Before I could ask the question, she sent out a mass email to family and friends saying they were selling a ton of baby stuff and the yellow chair was on the list! I was happy to hear it was for sale, because when I finally asked her where she bought it, the store had closed 3 years ago! The red curtains were a hand-me-down from my nephew Brett's old rooms in Florida & Texas. Their new house in KC has unusual window shapes and so these curtains were no longer needed. The map of the world canvas was purchased with some baby shower gift cards from Land of Nod and so was the red book shelf below that from PBK. The bear atop the dresser is a "Build-a-Bear" named Truman "built" by our pals Nico & Junior last summer upon receiving the first referral for Yan. Cristina & I accompanied them to the store and they picked everything out themselves. How else do you explain the Marine's uniform, guitar, tighty-whitey's and the name "Truman"?

The knick-knacks are what gives a room "character" {for my little character!}. Jason & I bought the red onion-domed Russian Orthadox church music box from an open-air market in St. Petersburg. The writing on it is "Russia" written in the Cyrillic alphabet. The blue matryoshka doll is from our friend Mark {across the street} who travels to St. Petersburg for business frequently. He said the blue one was the most masculine one he could find {thus our reasoning for just buying Roman the music box!}. The Russian Coca-Cola can is from the specially-made Coke cans this past summer for the Olympics. I don't drink coke yet I was buying it just to find the Russian can for Roman to no avail. Finally I called up the biggest Coke-drinker I know and Sara was able to hook me up! The Russian dictionaries: the top blue one is the one Jason & I bought for our trip and the bottom one is my mom's from the '60's when she went she taught in Germany {guess she had a need for a Russian-English dictionary}. The little chickie is mine from when I was a baby, and so is the pewter cup & Beatrix Potter books. The clay-art soccer ball was made by Jason's sister Kim in grade school - a gift for Jason - now its a nice place to put some of the Russian rubles we saved for Roman. The 2 guide books are ones we purchased for our big Russia trip and I'd like Roman to have them so he can see our notes, etc... The 2 trains are from my grandpa Long's model train collection. They're Mo-Pac trains which were the ones he worked on in the '40's & '50's. {About a month ago, we took out all of my grandpa's old trains and divided them up between all 5 of his grandchildren.} The Pinnochio ring stacking thingamajig is from Nana & Pop - they went to Italy 2 days after Roman came home and they brought it back as a souvenier. That is Roman's stacking work in the photograph. He does it all hodge-podge and doesn't realize you're supposed to stack them in size.

In addition to all of the knick-knacks I took my love of decorating with photographs and applied it to Roman's room, as well. He has pix of him with all of his cousins & pals on his bulletin board. His birth announcement is framed and so is the first referral picture we received. Last but not least, a pic of Roman & his "girlfriend" Ava {in their swimsuits -Brown Chicken Brown Cow} is on his nightstand. I love this pic of him gazing at her. I surprised him with it one afternoon and he walked all over the room finding the perfect place for it and then he actually threw it in his crib and then climbed in! Out his window, he has a view of Ava's house across the street. We'll be sitting in the big yellow chair reading a book and Ava will come out, Roman will see her and Roman will shut the book on me mid-sentance and yell "the end" {well actually it is more like "E N"} and then he'll yell "Vava!" and then collect his socks & shoes and run down the stairs to go outside!

So check out the Shutterfly pix of "Roman's Room" for more!

Also I meant to send these out sooner since Roman has been in his "big-boy" bed for 2 months now... Without further adieu, here are video clips of Roman effortlessly climbing in & out of his crib: