When Carter was moved from a crib to a big boy bed, honestly, I wasn't too emotional. Jason had a hard time at first, but he just seemed ready, so it didn't bother me so. Well, combining the boys into one room was a whole different story--I was shocked! It seemed too soon and too fast that we had our boys sharing a room. We have four bedrooms, why would we need them to share? No, we're not pregnant! It was a personal decision for the following reasons:
1. Relationship--start them now! I love the thought of them waking each morning seeing each other and the thought of if Carter wakes from a bad dream, Everett is there (and vice versa). I love the bond that is naturally created with coexisting in the same room.
2. Sharing--as you know, we are experiencing one of life's awesome challenges with multiple children and sharing. I think if they share a room, the correlation to sharing toys is automatically existent. Of course, they are entitled to their own special toys/ blankies, etc...
3. Budget/ Cost--HOLY CRAP (I can say that, and I do say that for emphasis!). We have so much STUFF. It's disgusting. Even in our quest to live simply, our constant "cleansing" of material goods, we still have it. Loads of stuff. Combining these two into one room automatically eliminates it. I just combined two closets into one, and two dressers into one. How's that for instant control of purchasing clothing/toys?!
4. Space--leave it to my selfish ambition to realize that once the two are in one room, there's a whole extra room for my crafting and our office. Ba-da-bing. Splendid. Yes, child #3 will have to fit in there somewhere, but through all this cleansing, a closet is sounding quite reasonable for his or her home.
5. Travel--we travel A LOT. At least once a month and the boys are great sleepers when we do, however, they need their own space or they wake each other up... we did this primarily because we were noticing just how high-maintenance we were as a family and it's our personal decision to rough it out for a few days in order to get the boys to sleep through their little noises, etc. If we didn't travel as much, I can honestly say that we wouldn't have been in such a rush to combine them.
The new and slightly crammed boys' room:
(Didn't even spend one dollar on the transition--whoot whoot! As you can tell, I'm a bit proud, but that's due to the fact that the inner decorating-lover wanted to redo an entire room just for the fun of it)
So to update those who are interested:
Night one was flawless, both kids woke happy and chatting to each other, it was so special.
Night two was flawless...until 6am when Everett decided it was time to wake up. I don't let my kids out of bed before 7am, and I was a bit confused on how to handle this as he would obviously wake Carter up. He did, but Carter, my sleeping champ, went back to sleep until 8am. I finally walked in and got the Bee at 6:45am. Hoping tomorrow morning is a different story.
So far, I love it! Like the cloth diaper transition, I'm kind of regretting not doing it sooner. I love seeing them play together and they even did solo/crib time together today! Baby Bee lasted 45 mins because half the time he was just watching Kid!
Ooh, and those curtains most definitely will be receiving a little "spice" via Singer... stay tuned...