Growing.

I have been struggling a bit lately. Ghosts of a long (ok, not so long) ago depression have been lurking just outside my frame of reference. While I was painting Doodle's room and organizing things and cleaning out and cleaning I was thinking a lot about his first room, the one he shared with my post transplant Mother and with Crusty. It was barely bigger than a normal bathroom. Just enough room for a twin bed, a crib and dresser with a changing pad. All pretty much stacked up next to each other. Mom's things were in the dresser, Crusty's toys were under the bed and everything Sebastian owned lived in the crib. He slept upstairs with us in his cradle. Crusty slept on the floor of our bedroom unless mom was in the hospital and then after a hefty clean and scouring for lost pills and needles he would sleep in his own bed for a few days until she came home. It was a mess and nothing like the dreamy nursery I had imagined.

During this time I developed a nasty case of post partum depression fueled by post traumatic stress disorder. ( that is a whole lot of suffering for words with "post" in them.) One of ways it manifested was with insomnia, no matter how tired I was I just couldn't sleep for more than an hour so. There was always someone who needed me. Even when someone else took over I couldn't really let go and sleep. I was constantly on alert. One of the things I did was make a wall hanging for the bedroom door. It was done all by hand, one stitch at a time, out of my head. Mostly in the semi dark living room while everyone else slept. With the TV on mute and the light from the street I could see well enough. On the forest floor there is a rather grumpy looking gnome surrounded by some very happy looking mushrooms. Climbing the tree are several dozen ants, winding their way around it's trunk. Above there is an owl and some bees sharing the trees hollow spot. In the branches to one side is a baby possum stealing a strawberry and further up a swallow returning to her egg filled nest. On Doodle's first birthday I added the acorns ( One for Doodle, one for Crusty stitched on at their respective heights. My Mother had died and the boys were a little more spread out in their tiny room. Though both continued to sleep upstairs with us for a while, we were all still out of sorts.

When we moved in here there were still all of the things from Mom's house to deal with, and this house had issues that couldn't wait. For those reasons it has taken two years to get around to painting the boys rooms. Crusty's is still in progress but Doodle's is done. It's a bright sunny yellow nabbed from the oops bin at Home Despot. He is very pleased and his tree finally has a place to grow again. You can see a few more photos here.