Designing Ada's Modern Nursery

This past summer, in midst of all the 2020 wildness, our family grew a little bigger with the addition of our daughter, Adelaide Emerson Proby. Ada for short.

At the same time Ada was born, we were finishing up building our new home. Let me tell you: the nesting instinct is real. We spent the first couple of months after she arrived moving between different apartments waiting for the build to finish. And what I wanted more than a laundry room or kitchen or the ability to hang clothes in an actual closet, was a room for my daughter.

As a new mom, you romanticize the nursery a bit. You imagine it as the magical space full of snuggles and sleeps and that little cooing sound only babies can make. I was so looking forward to creating a place for us to build first memories. This is where she will learn to crawl, walk talk.

But when we finally got into our home, and as I'd gotten the tiniest bit used to motherhood, I also had a little more clarity to realize something very simple but true: babies are babies. As much as we wish, they don't fully yet appreciate how much time we spent picking out the perfect mauve-not-pink rug. They haven't fallen in love with tea parties or monster trucks, and they don't know if you went gender neutral or princess pink. They only know that they're hungry. Or tired. And most important, that you're there.

So creating a nursery, in so many ways, isn't really about designing a space for your baby. It's about creating a space for you—a comforting landing spot while the baby is crying (again), eating (again), or sleeping (again). You'll have the rest of their kiddo-hood to follow their princess whims and truck fantasies. For now, for this period, it's OK to create a space that inspires and revives you. Heaven knows as a parent to a newborn, you can use all the rejuvenation you can get.

For Ada's nursery, I wanted to create a room that was warm and feminine without being frilly. Typically, I love a good moody space and adore anything with a pop of black, but for this room I wanted to deviate and create something light and bright. A space full of adventure and budding memories and possibility. My husband and I love to travel, and I wanted the room to give her that same sense of exploration—even in her tiniest, earliest moments.

I also wanted to invest in pieces that were transitional—furnishings I could repurpose later in other areas of the home. So many things for a baby are temporary and fleeting (and expensive!). How much better to discover pieces that can work for the long haul.

We are still in the process of polishing off the space. We'll be adding wall paper behind the sofa, textured shades in the windows, and a few other tweaks I'll be sure to share. But in the meantime I wanted to include a little peek into our baby girl's world here. I hope you find some adventurous inspiration in its four walls. It's become such a respite for our family, and I'm so thankful for this little corner of our home.