A Change

We tried to have Aric and Kellyn share a room.  It turns out that even though they are close in age, they are too far apart in maturity.  We've had to keep the bassinet set up in our bedroom and choreograph how we get the kids to sleep in the same room and how/if they should wake up in the same room.  It's been a little stressful and a typical night consists of Kellyn falling asleep by 7:15pm.  I take her up to our room, put her in the bassinet and make sure the bedroom door is closed.  By 7:30pm Aric usually is ready for bed.  One of us will go through his bedroom routine and put him in his crib.  Aric usually protests rather loudly going to bed for the next 10 to 15 minutes.  Then I work out for an hour.  After working out before I take a shower I go into the nursery and check on Aric.  While there I turn off his nightlight, make sure the heater is on and then get Kellyn from our room.  I very carefully pick her up and move her to her crib in the nursery hoping that she doesn't wake up.  This doesn't even touch what happens overnight if/when one or more of them wakes up.

Ryan has suggested that we move Kellyn's crib to the guest room and so far I have resisted thinking that the room is too small, where are we going to put guests/kids when they visit, and what are we going to do for climate control, etc.  This morning, while lying in bed after going through an unusual night where Aric woke up crying, I was thinking about the guest bedroom again and it occurred to me that the current guest bedroom didn't have to be a guest bedroom.  Then the wheels started spinning and I came up with a plan.  After a couple of text messages back and forth with Ryan he decided to come home early today and help me with my plan.

Ryan moved Kellyn's crib to the guest bedroom and moved the guest bed into Aric's room, which is a much larger room.  It solves several problems and if we have guests they'll just use Aric's room and we'll move him to the pack and play in another room.  Here are some preliminary photos of Kellyn's new room:

Don't worry the Texas decor will be gone.  She has a Hawaiian Noah's Ark quilt which I plan to decorate her room around.

When the weather gets nicer I'll move that dresser out and refinish it to match the crib.  It'll be a good dresser for Kellyn to grow up with.

There's so much more to do and bare walls to decorate but it's a start.  At least tonight we won't have to go through our nightly dance.  It'll be nice to lay Kellyn in a crib and not have to move her an hour later.