Adopted by Rilex

33

"Yup." I pop the P.

"Okay, cool, send us the Amazon cart and we'll get going." He replies.

"Ight bet." I say before quickly sending the link for the cart to my parents.

The drive to the hardware store did not take long. We got there within a few minutes of leaving the house. When we found the paint isle we spent a long time looking at samples and debating what color we should get for the nursery.

"We should go with green, it's gender neutral and goes with practically ever other color." I state.

"What shade?" Papa asks.

"Nothing bright and gross." I suggest.

"What about," dad picks up a paint sample, "a moss green?" He holds up a semi-dark, muted, foresty, green.

"Oh, I like it." I reply.

"Let's grab some similar shades and we can take them home and decide." Dad suggests.

"What about this one?" I pull out a much lighter shade of green, "this might also look nice."

"Let's just grab a bunch of non-obnoxious shades of green and take them home." Papa suggests.

"Okay." I start picking out shades of green that I think are nice.

When we get back to the house we go to the guest room that is soon to be the nursery. It still had the old furniture in it that needed to be removed but we just worked around it.

We taped all the paint samples to the wall and took a step back to try to decide.

"I feel like the furniture in here is making it difficult to picture as a nursery." Dad seemed overwhelmed by the paint choices.

"Do you want to move the furniture out?" Papa asks.

"Yeah, we should, we have the new furniture coming in tomorrow anyway." He replies.

Dad and papa spent some time moving all the furniture out and clearing out the room so that it would be empty.

"Are we painting all four walls or just an accent wall?" Dad asks, "what if we buy new curtains and they don't match the color scheme?" He was getting stressed.

"Alex." Papa places his hands on dad's shoulders, "we can get matching curtains it's okay," he explains, "why are you stressing?" He asks.

"What if it's not perfect?" Dad asks.

"What if what's not perfect?" Papa asks for clarification.

Dad glances at me before responding, hesitating to speak Infront of me, "what if we're not perfect?" Dad asks.

"We will be perfect," papa smiles at him, "because you are perfect."

A soft smile makes it's way into dad's face, "I love you." He says.

"I love you too." Papa replies lovingly.

"I'm sorry." Dad rests his head against papas shoulder.

"Sorry for what?" Papa asks.

Once again dad glances over at me before speaking, "for everything," he admits, "you deserve better than me."

"No," papa replies, "I love your you're perfect, but can we talk about this later?" He asks, "right now we just need to choose a paint color, let's focus on one thing at a time, okay?" Papa asks.

"Okay." Dad replies.

I tried to pretend like I was not listening to the entire exchange but everyone knows I was. "So Stella," papa catches my attention.

"Yeah?" My head snaps up to look at them.

"What do you think, accent wall or all four walls?" He asks.

"We should do one accent wall, and get curtains that fit the color scheme." I explain, "we can put the crib against the accent wall, but we can't make the wall with the window the accent wall if we're getting matching curtains."

"I like your thinking." Papa declares, "do you like that idea?" He directs his attention to Alex.

"Sounds great." Dad agrees, "but what color?"

"I still really like that moss green." I point to the mossy shade of green I liked.

"I like it too." Papa states.

"Then let's go with that one." Dad seemed to cheer up, "we can go back right now and pick up a gallon of it."

"And some brushes and a drop cloth." Papa adds.

"Do I get to help paint?" I ask.

"Of course!" Papa replies.

"I can't wait for this room to all be finished." I admit.