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The Shared Bedroom…An Update

Jos
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About a year and a half ago I wrote about our decision to have Harvey & Stella share a bedroom. So far I’d say our 5 main takeaways have held true.

  1. Kids sleep with Dad ears, not Mom ears. – CHECK
  2. Consistency is Important with Kids’ Sleep Routines, but Don’t Be Afraid to Switch it Up when Necessary – CHECK
  3. They get used to each other’s noises, and white noise helps a lot.- CHECK
  4. You’ll probably get less sleep in the morning if your kids share a room. – CHECK CHECK TRIPLE CHECK
  5. It’s really awesome to watch the relationship between your kids grow when they share a room. – CHECK

So…what’s there to update? Well, we went ahead and actually built them bunk beds this summer, so I thought I’d write about the pros and cons of this arrangement!

At first I was just looking for something cheap on local message boards, but the more we thought about it, the more I wanted to build something quality that would add functionality to our home. It’s only 1,400 sq. ft. to begin with and not a very great layout, so we wanted to find a way to increase our ability to comfortably house guests while not taking away from the limited space we have to begin with in the room.

The key for us? Queen over queen built-in bunk beds!

I started off by pinning a bunch of ideas here so that my husband would have a good idea of what I was looking for, and then thanks to having a handy husband who can build things, we ordered up the materials and away we went!

The key things I wanted in our beds were:

Sounds easy, right?

Well, there were definitely moments that involved a bit of cursing during this project, but in the end we are both really happy with how everything turned out! Bonus – while we were doing this, we finally painted the ceiling a nice, crisp white (which had ONE strip painted 4 years ago when we converted it from a loft to a bedroom but we never got around to painting the rest), bought a new smoke detector that wasn’t a putrid yellow-y color (um, still need to do this), painted the west wall of their room teal to try to make it not quite so pink themed, did touch-up paint on a bunch of areas throughout the room, put glow in the dark starts on the ceiling, removed the crib, and basically converted it to a kid room instead of a nursery.

WAAAAAAA. WAAAAAA. I’m the only one sad about this in a way I think!

 

So far we are really loving it, BUT, the biggest issue is with the kids playing musical beds. We have let them figure out where they wanted to sleep, and most of the time Harvey is in the top bunk and Stella is on bottom, but we definitely have nights that they go from separate beds to together on bottom or together on top. Little twirps. Lately we have actually taken to me putting Harvey down first at about 8pm. I’ll crawl into the top bunk with him, sing a few songs, say prayers, tuck him in, and leave. Then 20-30 minutes later either Charlie or myself will sneak back in with Stella and tuck her in. That way they don’t chat forever (like an hour +) and usually stay in their own beds. Sleep is always a work in progress. 🙂

I’ve written a lot about sleep in general (click here for a list of those posts), but here are the posts I’ve written about their actual room and it’s evolution over the years. It’s so crazy to see how it’s gone from a workout room / office to a baby nursery to a shared baby/toddler room to a little kid room.

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