Change of Plans

I know you all are dying to hear how our granola turned out. Well, I regret to say that no granola was made, and no clothes were tagged. Instead, we ventured out into the wind and rain and bought a new (to us) crib! On Friday, Bob noticed a crib on the "for sale" board at his work, and we had been playing phone tag with the guy since then. We were finally able to make connections this afternoon, so we went to his house, liked the crib, and brought it home. It's a lighter brown sleigh crib. I'll have to post a picture when we get it set up (which is not an urgent priority because we do have 2 cribs, LOL).

So why were we even interested in a third crib? Well, to make a long story short, for Grace, we borrowed a crib from some friends in the homeschool co-op, but it is absolutely the cheapest Jenny Lind crib made. Shortly after Grace was born, the latch for the sliding side broke, so since then we have never been able to raise or lower the side. It just always remains up, which makes changing the sheets a royal hassle, especially when pregnant. It's also harder for the boys to get Grace up, since they have to lift her up and over the whole side.

We have had sort of mixed luck with cribs, and I can say "cribs" because we have had several of them! The first crib we bought, the one for Nathan, I bought used from an Army family at Ft. Carson. I was by myself when I went to look at it, and that's never a good situation because I always feel terrible about rejecting something in someone's own house, and I don't know how to make a graceful exit. So even though I could see that it was . . . rickety . . . for lack of a better word, that's what I bought and Nathan was in until he moved into a big bed.

When Luke came along, we bought another used crib, this one from a family up at the Air Force Academy. This crib, a Bassett, has been an absolute workhorse for us. We still have it, and it's the crib Anna is in. The family we bought it from had maybe 3 kids, and we've had 3 kids in it as well, since it was also Caleb's crib. It has also survived 3 of our moves with no problems! I thought it was really ugly when we first bought it, but it has grown on me, especially since it has been so reliable!

When we moved from USAFA, we left Nathan's old crib out for the trash men to pick up, so we just had Luke's crib. Caleb used that, so when we had Jonathan, we needed another one. Some friends of my parents had given them their old crib, so we used that one for Jonathan. We left that with my parents when we moved, and they have that set up for one of the girls to use when we visit.

Since we left that one behind, that explains why we needed yet another "second" crib when we were expecting Grace! I'm hoping that the crib we bought today will be another good, faithful sort of crib, so that we don't have to buy any more cribs. And as soon as we get this one up and running, Grace's old crib will be returned to our friends!