Bedroom Arrangements: August 2014

This was another question I got:  Where do the kids all sleep?

We live in a 1500 square foot townhouse, and while that's not itty bitty (in my opinion) it isn't the home you would picture for a family with as many kids as we have.  It has three bedrooms and we utilize the basement as another.  The real downfall of this place, which we were well aware of, is the outside.  The bigger kids have already ougrown the back yard, but the inside still works very well.  Our current situation is as follows:

The smaller bedroom houses Emily.  She has her own room right now.  She had moved into a toddler bed at 14 months and then began banging on her door in the middle of the night around 17 months, so... welcome back pack n play.  I tried to put her to bed in the twin about a week ago and she was terrified.  She wanted the pack n play.  So that's where her little booty resides for now.  I mentally toy with adding a sibling in there with her, but at her age, it just isn't worth it to rock the boat.

The green bin on the twin bed has her diapers and wipes and I use the waterproof pad as her changing "table."  All her clothes are in the closet in a dresser and hung on the rods.  The actual room is literally made up of the twin bed and the pack n play and that works out just swimmingly.  :)  It's toddler proof and the room is ridiculously easy to keep clean!  Win win win! 

The big bedroom is where the other three are.  For the last year, June had lived in the basement bedroom. For quite a while everyone had their own room: Eliz in the small, Josh in the big, Emily in my room, and June in the basement.  That was a pretty nice arrangement  for most of that year, until Emily desperately needed to be out of my room.   Anyway, at the beginning of this Summer June changed his tune and wanted to move back upstairs.  Fine with me. We did some shuffling and are still in transition as far as cementing down the bedtime routine, but ascetically we have it down.

The toddler bed is currently where Josh sleeps... he gets up the earliest (he is allowed out of his room at 7) and when he was on the bunk bed, he would disturb siblings on his way out of the room in the morning.  He can sneak quietly out from the toddler bed.

On the bunk beds, Elizabeth has the bottom bunk.  I plan to rig a curtain across her bunk so that her and Josh can fall asleep together without her being able to see/bother him.  I haven't figured out the right system to hang the curtain yet though.  

June is on the top bunk.  It gives him the most light to read at night and he's the oldest so why not get the top!

They each have their own rod in the closet with all their shirts and church clothes.  There is a small dresser in the closet and one outside the closet that they each have a few drawers for their pants, undies, jammies, etc.  The bins under the -not currently used- changing table have "outfits" so when they wake up they just have to grab a set of clothes and can get dressed for the day.  The closet stays locked because they ::coughElizabethcough:: have a bad habit of taking shirts off hangers and clothes out of drawers, etc.  Except for her underwear and jammies, all of Elizabeth's clothes are in the closet.  The boys share the other dresser drawers.  Elizabeth doesn't seem to have interest riffling through their clothes.  So this room is comprised of the bunk beds, toddler bed, dresser, changing table, and closet.  Simple.  I like simple.

The hard part?  Getting three children to fall asleep in the same room, together, before midnight.  Our default is to separate them to fall asleep.  It's not perfect... at all... though it's been our only tried-and-true way to make it work.  They don't wake each other up through the night and the mornings are calm and easy, but getting them to fall asleep, is not.  I'm still crafting out a system but as of right this very moment, Josh falls asleep in my room, Eliz falls asleep in her actual bed, and June falls asleep in the hallway.  Yup.  Hallway.  My ultimate ultimate goal is to have them all fall asleep in their own beds.  I am trying a staggered approach, but Elizabeth is not a quick fall-asleeper, so so far I haven't clicked into anything workable.  I also have sat in their room while they fell asleep but that can end up taking a LONG time and time is of the essence at night.  That's my time to clean and fold laundry or even just relax.  The goal is to keep working until we find what, well, works.  

Moving on: 

Last is the baby's "room."  My babies stay in my room anywhere from 3 months to a year.  The most awesome transition was the 3 month stint, but usually we don't have an open bedroom to plunk a baby in.  My plan this time is to start the baby out in the closet-bedroom that is in the master bedroom and hopefully that will give the feel of a bedroom from early on and elicit wonderful sleep.  I'm a self proclaimed sleep nut and Emily is still... still still STILL waking up and is now having a hard time going down to sleep at night.  I don't even like typing that out.  I don't like it one bit.  Not one.  

Lesson learned: don't get cocky about anything in life... God will serve up a nice piece of humble pie!  I have always had fairly awesome nappers and while my kids take a while to sleep all the way through the night, they always slept about 14 hours from lay-down to morning-up so I had plenty of time to sleep myself.   When they did finally sleep through the night in one chunk, it was a solid 13 hours at least.  They usually don't sleep all the way through until 11-12 months, but getting 13 hours straight AND long nappers was well worth it.  I felt very high and mighty, and then God gave me Emily.  Ehem.  She is a good napper now, but she was "average" for a good chunk of her babyhood which drove me nuts AND she was a tough tough sleeper the first year.  She slept through the night for a few weeks after her birthday, yes weeks, and then the epic teething began and now she just won't sleep soundly all the way through.  She's 19 months old.  ::sob::  Lesson learned.  Sleep guru I am not... at least not a boastful one.  Having Emily does make me want to really prepare for this baby though and make sure that on my end I am doing everything right to help ensure a good sleeper.  But yes, humble pie.  Eaten and digested.  I, a self proclaimed sleep expert, have a tough sleeper. ::cringe::

Anyway, little lady will spend her nights and parts of her days, in her room within my room. 

That's the breakdown.  Baby in our room, Emily in one bedroom, June, Josh, and Elizabeth in the other.  Bam.  1 townhouse, 5 kids.  In all honesty, it doesn't even feel cramped beyond getting them to fall asleep.  Our bedrooms are plenty big enough for all the beds we would need and the downstairs living space fits everyone well for day time use.  It's fun to see dynamics of who sleeps where, but I'm definitely seeing that you can make any space work if you just tweak it enough.  I feel like I look like the old lady who lived in the shoe when 15 children come piling out of my townhouse, but really, it's plenty cozy and this is how we make it work.  Bonus: right now we have a guest room since there is still the basement bedroom which is untouched.  Now I feel fancy... ;)