A Life In The Days Of Eva Maxwell

Entry 13:

I walked up the stairs to the freshly painted den. Darin had picked out a soft yellow color, claiming that it was gender neutral and that it would be good for all of the kids to play in. We were beginning to remodel our den into a playroom now that our kids were a little older and needed more room for their excessive amounts of toys.

As I walked through the door frame(there was no door yet, it was being painted cream on the back to match the cream trim that decorated the walls) I heard a thud down the hallway. I turned to see Darin pushing a dark oak toy box across the carpeted floor and into the new playroom. She pushed it to the wall where the three others were already set up.

"Okay so," Darin said, turning to me. "We've got the toy boxes here, and now all we need are-"

"The signs." I interrupted, holding up four signs; "Wren", "Jacob", "Carter", and "Sammi". The were made of the same dark oak wood and the names were painted in the same cream color as the door was about to be. I grabbed the hammer and nails from the corner and hammered the signs in: one above each toy box.

Darin had headed downstairs to grab the kids toys so that they could be moved into their new home; the toy box. I stayed in the room and started putting up the wall cling that read "Twinkle twinkle little star, do you know how loved you are?" Darin had bought it just a few days ago saying how cute it was.

Darin came back up and we split up the work, her putting Wren and Carter's toys in there assigned boxes, and me putting Jacob and Sammi's in there own boxes. Wren(who's four), Jacob(who's three), and Carter(also three) were all at preschool. Sammi was the toddler that Darin and I were adopting next week. The room was going to be a surprise for all of the kids.

After we were done, I moved the box of books upstairs so that Darin could put them all of the bookshelf we'd bought, and then went back down to move up the table and chair. They were dark oak, like the rest of the furniture in the room, and each chair had a cushion with the kids names on them. We put two baskets beside the table, one for coloring books and one for the art materials. In the middle of the room they had a carpet that had roads and paths to drive cars on, and across the room was a set of shelves that had baskets on them. Each basket was labeled with what was in it and was a different color.

After Darin finished the bookshelf, she moved up the beanbag chairs, giant stuffed animals, and the pillows(each was shaped like a different thing... an emoji, an ice cream cone, a turtle, etc.) and put them in a corner that already had a sign above it the read, "Shhh... I'm reading." And then moved to put the movies(Barney, Barbie, Elmo, Dora, Little Einstein, etc.) on the shelves that were underneath the T.V. I'd installed earlier that day.

After we were done, we stood back to admire our handiwork. The room was finally finished and I couldn't be more happy about it. Well... minus the door.