Changes

I'm not exactly sure what prompted the change, but we did some major rearranging around our house this weekend. It might have been the fact that I noticed Tate's bed was getting too small for him. He's been sleeping on a mattress on the floor in his room since a couple months after his birth. We've followed the Montessori approach of using a floor bed and making the rest of the room as safe as a crib would be. It's worked really well for Tate (and worked well for Henry, too). 

But Tate is a big boy, and at 16 months, he is outgrowing his mattress. Our original plan was to put Henry and Tate in the same bedroom as soon as possible. We were going to go the bunk bed route (I've been itching to paint an IKEA bunk bed!). But sleep is just too tenuous around our house to consolidate the boys into the same room right now. Both of them sleep through the night regularly, but there always seems to be something that wakes up one or the other. Tate will be sick and his coughing will wake him up. Then he'll get better and Henry will get sick. And then they'll both be well and then there will be a loud thunderstorm that wakes up one of them and then the other. Or our dog will be snoring in the most distracting way. It's crazy! 

It means we are not ready to put them in the same room and increase the chances of waking. No way! 

But at the same time, we are eager to have a guest room. Right now we make our guests sleep on a futon mattress in the living room. Also, Matt has been hankering for a king-size bed for years. So, we decided on the following configuration:

• Get a new king-size Malm bed from IKEA for our room
• Move our queen-size Malm bed into Henry's room
• Move Henry's twin-size mattress into Tate's room

It took some arranging and rearranging, but I'm really happy with the way Henry's room turned out. Although there is no longer a lot of floor space to play on, I love having the big bed for reading and wrestling. I also plan to turn his table into a writing and art center soon. There's plenty of floor space in the living room, entryway, or Tate's room. It's crazy to see little Henry sleeping on such a big bed (I didn't have anything bigger than a twin until I graduated from college!).

When we do have guests, we can have Henry sleep in Tate's room for the night. We'll see how it goes!

In case you're interested:

• Here's Henry's first Montessori nursery
• Here's his bedroom when he was one

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