Having gotten the nursery painted (white), Kevin and I assembled the crib and started diverting all our baby stuff into the room. Next, my dear friend and I visited Ikea to get the decorating started. It's all very charming, but I don't have photos to post yet so you'll have to wait.
In the mean time, I'm trying to come up with something else to post so that my angry political post can move down the line. Based on
npr this morning and the person who is maybe the person second most interested in my nursery (...maybe third), I will talk about sisterhood. Anyway, our nursery theme was her idea.
The author of the npr book asserts that, "In some ways, siblings and especially sisters are more influential in your childhood than your parents." This was certainly true for me. I don't have any photos from my childhood, but, trust me when I say that most of them were taken with my sister. That's true for most people with siblings, I suspect. I think my parents did an excellent job with parenting so I don't think there's any way around it but, when I think of the major familial influences on my personality, my sister does feature somewhat more prominently than my parents.
I think that having an older sister may make the effect more profound since she was there from the day I was born. In addition, her opinion was super important to me and my opinion didn't become important to her until somewhat later. She played a major role, consciously and unconsciously, in helping me to decide on things like what to wear and whether or not I was attractive (conclusion: not when compared to her). She was popular and pretty and always had a boyfriend, so, really, who better to ask. Anyway, as I get older, I still process what these things mean for me now. I point now toward an article in the new york times on
birth order. Apparently it's not as important as we think but I fit so well into the laid-back, funny, and adaptable second child role. Plus,
Time magazine points out how consistent birth order stereotypes have been historically. Man, it would have sucked to be the younger sibling of a president!