New Beds

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Yesterday we journeyed to IKEA to buy Micah his new bunkbed. They have this great toddler sized bunkbed; it actually fits a twin sized mattress, but it is only 3 1/2 feet high off the ground. The bottom bed lays right on the floor. We decided to only buy one mattress to put Micah on the top, and Jaden could sleep in the toddler bed. This way we can keep an eye on him better (he's not hidden under the top bunk) and we can put their toys on the floor under the top bunk. It took about 3 hours, but Martin did a great job! Here are some pictures....








The boys have shared a room since Jaden was born. There have been a few challenges but for the most part it has worked well, and they seem to like rooming together. A lot of people have asked me how we've made it work, and if they wake each other up. One thing that worked for us was putting the boys to bed at different times (both for nap and bedtime). This would give one the chance to fall asleep so it would be quiet enough for the other one to fall asleep easily. When we've tried to put them down at the same time, they usually play and keep each other up. When they finally developed the same sleeping schedule, we'd put Jaden down at 1:00pm for a nap, and Micah down at 1:15pm. If Jaden still was not asleep by 1:15, we could either let Micah sleep in our bed or wait until Jaden fell asleep. They both would wake up around the same time (around 3pm), but if one woke up earlier, I would just rush in and take that child out of the room. At nighttime, we often put Jaden down around 7:30pm, and read to Micah in our bedroom until 8pm. Then we can put Micah in his own bed quietly, and we make a big deal that it is quiet time. If he wakes Jaden up by screaming or getting out of bed, he gets in trouble. Now that they're both older, though, we sometimes read to them together and put them down at the same time. Sometimes they stay up for about 10 minutes or so, but usually they are both so tired they fall asleep easily.

Last night went pretty smoothly. We finally got the room situated by 9:30pm and so they went to bed very late. But they both stayed in their beds the whole night, except for Jaden who got up once because he had a coughing attack, and he came out looking for one of us to give him water. This morning at 6am Jaden crawled into bed with me and fell back asleep until 6:30. I may let that happen for a few mornings since I miss snuggling with him, but very soon I'll be weaning him off of THAT habit! :)

I think one of the weirdest things was dismantling the crib forever! The crib has been in the room for FOUR years now! Since Micah was only 23 months old when Jaden was born, we just moved Micah right on up to a toddler bed and Jaden used the crib. It was a little sad, but not really :) We were ready.

I'm working on a post describing a church leadership seminar I went to last Friday - it was amazing - so stay tuned for that...