Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Living on the Edge

When we moved in, we were thrilled that the girls had their own rooms, and would therefore, hopefully not disturb each others' sleep. Now I'm not saying that every night has been as we would have hoped - they are kids afterall, meaning they are totally unpredictable in every way - but things have been good and comfortable. Time to switch things up a bit! Why? Well, for one, a couple of nights of Cooper staying up until 2 typing papers on the computer, which happens to be in our bedroom. Very near the bed. Where I was "sleeping." That and, we'd always planned on putting the girls together eventually. Someday. Probably when they were both in big girl beds. But let's face it, my art supplies (along with all the sewing and craft stuff that my parents have cleared out of their house and left in our garage) are taking over the house and really need a home, a room to call their own. And as a bonus, now I don't have to feel bad that Jenelle had such a cute, matching, fun room, while Meri's seemed to collect all the mismatched furniture, and be our storage unit to boot. Now they have a fun, mismatched room to share!
I think we now have every color of wood in one room! And stuffed animals filling up every empty space, and the dress-ups taking up the entire space under the crib.
Although in real life, the walls are blue, not aqua. Weird camera. We also took out all the toys and replaced them with books - in the hopes that if Jenelle can't sleep she'll just read silently to herself. Ha, do you love how naive we are sometimes? Gotta try though, right?
So in an effort to make the transition as smooth as possible, we tired them out on a bike ride, and then tried to wind down with calm, story reading time. So far, pretty good. After we put them to bed, they laughed their heads off for nearly an hour. We finally went in there and, as expected, they were both in the crib. What I hadn't expected was Jenelle to have brought her bed, basically only minus the mattress, into the crib with them. They were even both lying down. Cute! Jenelle had just got tired of their game of Meri stealing her binky. I'm wondering though, did Jell really think she was going to sleep in there? Is that what she thought we meant when we kept talking about how they were going to sleep together in the same room now? Anyway, it's been a few hours and they are actually sleeping. So we'll keep our fingers crossed. I actually never shared a room growing up, and I can't imagine Cooper did, but I've always thought it was probably fun. It's probably a grass is always greener thing. Regardless, if you have any advice about how to make this work best, please share!

6 comments:

Lyndsey said...

You guys are so brave!!! Your plan seems perfectly logical and I know that you need to do the room share for a while but it does have it's moments. For us, if we can put them down at the same time there seems to be less issues since it is usually Tommy getting settled that is really noisy and always wakes up Caitlin. Poor baby doesn't usually make it to 8pm since Tommy wakes her up at 6am. So it is a problem a lot for us.
You can do it though!!! They get used to it. They start not having laugh fest every night all though they don't totally disappear. They start sleeping through the others cries. Things are usually more crazy than not but you can make it work.

Hannah said...

So cute! I'm sure it will work out just fine. There will probably be an "adjustment period," but then it will be just fine. I love that Jenelle crawled into the crib with Meri. Where is that picture?!?

Erica and Aaron sleep together and it works great! Even though Aaron wakes up at night, Erica just keeps right on snoozing.

Mandy said...

They'll figure it out. Luckily they still like each other well enough that they can share . . . this experiment wouldn't have worked as well with my sister and I when we were teenagers . . .

Raina said...

You're doing great! I think the room looks adorable, and the cutest thing is how Janelle totally LOVES Meri at this stage! Hope it lasts! :D

Emily said...

I love the cute paint job, Alisha, and the cute alphabet border...what lucky girls to have such a talented mommy to make their room SOOOOO cute! I love the pink flower rug, too. I think it's cute that they were in there laughing for an hour, though...it's nice that they enjoy each other's company. I'm hoping my boys will be like that, too, since we plan to bunk them at some point in the distant future as well. You are brave parents, and I'm glad that it seemes like it's going to work out!

Jen said...

No idea. M and M have been together since birth, but are both still in cribs, and neither can climb in or out, isn't that odd? When they figure out that it's not that hard, and that they can actually cross that line, what will I do? I am super afraid of those bedtimes! But, when you only have two kid bedrooms and almost four kids, the math says everyone must share! Good luck! At least they are happy!