A real conundrum for an expectant yuppie parent is how to decorate the baby's room. Yeah, technically you could just stick a bassinet and a pile of diapers in the room and call it a day, but how would that look on Pinterest? Would you be proud to show that off to your friends? It's essential to make sure that this being that can't even focus its eyes yet have an adorable, interesting, tasetful, and ideally clever room. Otherwise, why are you even having a child?

Steve and I fell victim to this mentality while I was pregnant. We at first congratulated ourselves on being relatively relaxed on the whole nursery thing, opting not to paint the room and happily accepting hand-me-down furniture and wall art, but then our obnoxious cutesy desire to be unique started rearing its head. I agonized over what type of Pottery Barn crib sheets to get. We moved the furniture around probably three times. And then came the wall decals.

Wall decals in theory are actually a great way to decorate a kid's room--or any room in general, actually, if you have a certain aesthetic. They take up a lot of space, don't involve drilling or painting and can be changed whenever you like. Steve and I first decided to put up some decals that we ordered on Amazon. We were really happy with how easy they were to apply and how they looked:

So, newly confident in our decal-applying skills, we ordered two more from Blik. They were both labeled "a worthwhile challenge," which we assumed was meant to scare off newbies unlike us. We are crafty people! Steve is handy! We could handle a couple of little decals. How wrong we were.

To date, I still don't think I've seen my husband get as angry about anything in his entire life as he did putting these decals on the baby's wall. We were never totally sure whether we were applying them the right way: one of them in particular, he took off the backing paper and immediately, like it was alive, the decal curled up on itself and stuck together. Normally Mr. Calm, Cool and Collected, he angrily balled it up and threw it on the floor, only to feel instant remorse at his reaction. In the end, we were able to order a replacement part and it all looked adorable (cuter than these not-great photos):

But they took a lot of work to put on right. I'd say it was harder than the time Steve replaced the sump pump or helped hang new lighting pendants in the kitchen. But gratifyingly, after about a year and a half, the baby was actually able to identify the monkey as a monkey and the elephant as an elephant and everything.

But now, we're getting ready to move and part of that process involves repainting the walls. So after about two years, it was time for the decals to come down. Now, taking decals down isn't technically difficult, but it's unexpectedly painful. I picked them off with my fingernails, and then, like an idiot, cooked a dinner that involved lemon juice in the recipe, so I had acidic burning lemon juice flowing into the paper cuts I had beneath my nails from picking off countless tiny bits off the walls:

Then I got wise and started using a hair dryer to soften the decals before I picked them off, but that also involves blowing hot air directly onto one's fingers for a prolonged period of time.

Finally, the decals are off, along with any sign that any interesting baby belonging to interesting people ever lived in that room.

I have not been completely soured on the decal experience. I might use them again in our new place, but only ones that are the most basic, basic, easy, one-piece decals made for complete idiots to put up. Nothing with a bunch of tiny delicate bits. Maybe one that's just a big fat circle and we'll call it a day (and we'll call it a ball.) Or maybe we'll finally get wise and get over our inclination to be designey and interesting. Interior-design wise, boring is the new cool. I'm calling it now.