A Birthday Message for Nana Roberts

I am having some difficulty with my e-mail and sending pictures, so I finally decided to take advantage of Nana Robert's frequent visits to this blog to post her birthday message here.

We did call Nana on her actual birthday back in August, but then I got busy with the start of school and never sent these pictures to her and now my e-mail won't let me.

 After Sydney told her Nana happy birthday, she asked if she could make something for her.  She chose a Styrofoam tray and the stickers and then drew in some details.  It wasn't really a mail-able piece of art, so we chose the take a picture of it instead.  This was the picture I was trying to send to Nana.

I started thinking of Nana after I posted this picture of sleeping children to Facebook.  I was thinking of everything the picture captured... the finger sucking, the love of books, the new nightgown from Grandma, Jack and his love of footed jammies, the bedding I picked out with Sydney from IKEA, the pop-up book from Mrs. Edwards, and then the headboard of Sydney's bed.  Sydney's bed is part of a very nice Bassett bedroom set that Jeremy's grandfather Harmon, Nana's husband, bought for Jeremy when Jeremy got his first apartment.  So my final birthday gift to Nana is this little story about the bedroom set, just in case she didn't realize it was the same one.

I know Jeremy and I think of Harmon every time we look at Sydney's furniture.  Jeremy isn't sentimental about a lot of things, but he is very attached to that bedroom set.  His grandfather bought it very inexpensively priced at an estate sale and it's my understanding that visiting estate sales and finding good value for less money was something Harmon really enjoyed.  It was Harmon who helped Jeremy move into that first apartment.

I remember Jeremy trying to arrange that bed, the dresser, and the desk in that first bedroom, pushing the bed all the way against the wall.  I remember thinking, "well, that's going to make it hard for me to get in and out of bed, but I guess I'll hold that thought in front of Jeremy's grandfather."  I remember that's what I thought because right after that, Harmon suggested Jeremy move the bed out from the wall a bit.  My dense husband (boyfriend at the time) said, "Why?"  Harmon only paused a split second before pointing out that it would make the bed easier to make in the mornings.  In that split second, I think I shot daggers at Jeremy though my piercing gaze and the bed was moved.  I loved Jeremy's grandfather in that moment -- reasonable and socially delicate at the same time.

When Jeremy and I move into our house, we wanted a queen sized bed, so the bedroom set from Harmon became the guest room furniture.  When Sydney needed that room, I asked Jeremy if he wanted to get more child-friendly furniture.  "Why?" he asked.  "She's going to take this set off to her first apartment, so she might as well start using it."

So there you go.

Happy Belated Birthday, Nana!