Bigger Beds

So, right after Kayla turned 2, and I mean the day after, we moved her into her big girl bed...

This is her right as she's seeing the bed for the first time.  She ran in, looked at it, ran back to me, then jumped into the bed.  Silly girl!

...and moved Tyler into the crib. 

 

In the office.  This is not ideal, but... We live in a 3 bedroom, 1300 sq ft, 2 story condo. We had one bedroom for us, one for Kayla, and one being used as an office. When we found out we were pregnant with #2 I really wanted them to share a room. I wanted to give them the “sibling” experience of reading and playing together and talking themselves to sleep that I never had (not that I miss it, I loved having my own room and didn't know anything different.  I'm imagining that sharing a room is a great thing.).  I wanted to keep my office. I wanted to be able to read to them, sing to them, tuck them in together in the same room at the same time.

But… at nap time she plays for a while before going to sleep (if she ever takes a nap), I still nurse him back to sleep in the middle of his nap (to give him a nice long one), and they don’t always hit their long nap times at the same time.

And… at night he goes to sleep somewhere between 7 and 8:30 and she goes to sleep somewhere between 8 and 9.

Not to mention… he still cries several times a night and we don’t want him waking her up.

So… I guess I’ll be putting my dreams of same room siblings on hold for a while.

But, we had to move Tyler out of our room and out of the pack 'n play. I don’t know about you but six and a half months had been a long time for us to have a baby screaming in our room. So, I finally gave in and moved him into the office. I really didn’t want to give up my computer time each night but it was time he was in his own room. I had serious hopes that the crib would work miracles and he’d suddenly start sleeping through the night. Well, miracles haven’t happened. Congestion and a tendency to roll over and not be happy about it relegated him to sleeping in the car seat… for almost 2 weeks!  But after that first couple weeks he got the hang of sleeping in his crib by himself.  But that hasn't stopped him from waking every few hours at night.  Apparently the crib isn't that comfy and he still needs mama.  And now that he's excited about being mobile and able to stand up it's getting harder.  But look how happy he is in there!

What about Kayla? We got her a little toddler bed. And holy cow is that sucker cute. Nothing extravagant – only $55 from Wal-Mart. It’s a bed, no need to go crazy here but it’s still cute. It’s a little baby bed, like an elf should be sleeping in it. I love it. And she loves it! Or at least she doesn’t hate it. I ended up also taking the shelf out of her room, which meant I also took the lamp out (b/c having it on the floor meant she sat there and unscrewed it, while it was on!), so it changed more than I would have liked but I'll eventually get a night stand ordered and hopefully return the lamp to her room. (She has to sleep with all the lights on in her room right now because the lamp is missing and she's scared of the dark.  So, yea, need to get that night stand ordered pronto!)  Some folks say you should change everything and make it a big girl room but, a) I wanted to keep as much the same as possible since she’s so young, b) in the event that they do share a room sometime soon I don’t want to redo the room again, and c) I love her room.

It doesn’t look like much from this picture because this is 2 feet from the floor but I’m thinking of getting some decals to put right there to spruce it up a bit. But, we haven’t had any problems with her sleeping like not wanting to sleep in it or suddenly start getting out of bed all the time, at least not at night. She’d had a guard rail on her previous bed so she was able to get out before. At first she didn't get out to play, and at night she still doesn't.  But nap times are so much worse now than they have ever been.  In fact I had resorted to driving her around 90-100% of the time becuase she gets into her room and won't stay in the bed.  She's up playing in the drawers, the closet, her toys, her books, whatever she can find.  She doesn't leave her room, so that's good, but she doesn't nap either.   I think every day that I should move her back into the crib for naps and let Tyler sleep in our bed but a) she might climb out of it since she wants to climb in, on, over, and under everything these days, and b) we don't want Tyler falling out of our bed.  So, I gotta figure out nap time.  Other than that the bed is great.  She stands in it, the same way she stood in her crib, to call me in the morning.  She slept in it in a ball in the end of it for a long time but she's slowly stretching out.  Eventually she'll get a pillow.  But I think she really likes the bed and the freedom, even if I don't love it all the time. 

And, until my dreams are realized, if they ever are, I got myself a new laptop that's much faster than the old one so I could work on it in the living room (when I've got the time!), get serious about getting Tyler to sleep through the night (for multiple reasons!), and continue to think about what I want their new room to look like… just in case.