Zoe has been consistently thrilled at the prospect of becoming a big sister ever since we told her. She’d been wishing for this as long as we had–which was a long time.

The only reservation she had was about moving to a new room. We have three bedrooms, but since I work from home, one of them has to be my office. So we realized the only real option was to move Zoe and the baby into the slightly bigger bedroom. While she said she was up for the change, she expressed a lot of anxiety about it.

At Christmas, my sister’s mother-in-law, who recently moved to this area from South Carolina, surprised us with a generous offer to paint the new kids’ room. She had recently repainted some rooms in my sister and brother-in-law’s house and was in the process of painting in her own house and I guess she was in the painting groove. We happily accepted.

Last week she was here for three days, expertly applying several coats of a bright yellow shade called summer wheat.

When my mom asked Zoe what she thought of the new paint job, Zoe gushed “it’s so beautiful!” and when Randy came home from work, Zoe showed him the room and said, “even when it’s nighttime outside, I’ll have sunshine in my room, and even when it’s winter, I’ll have summer in my room!”

Then yesterday, we moved the furniture around and set Zoe up in the new yellow room. Until we have time to set up the crib, her dolls and stuffed animals have taken up residence on the crib mattress in the corner. At bedtime last night, Zoe said, “I’m not worried about my new room any more. I just couldn’t imagine what it would look like before, but now that it’s all set up, I’m used to it already. It’s fabulous.”

Of course at bedtime last night and tonight, when I told her to get undressed, she wandered into the office. And then turned around and came back down the hall. At bedtime tonight when she was saying what she was thankful for, she said “I’m thankful that Chris is alive and that she painted my room.” Me too! Thanks, Chris.