Roomies

Seeing as our house is short a bedroom, we always planned to have Max and Molly share a room. We figured that as soon as Molly was sleeping through the night -- oh, around six months or so -- we'd move her into Max's room. Of course, since Molly slept through the night a few times at four months of age and then refused to do it any more, this plan kind of fell by the wayside.

But, now that Molly is actually sleeping through the night on a regular basis (even though she sometimes decides that it is time to get up at 5 a.m.), we thought it was time to evict our little roommate and reclaim our bedroom. So, since Dad is off of work for the week, we thought this was a good time to make the switch. I played with Max and Molly downstairs while Dad took Molly's crib apart, moved it to Max's room, and reassembled it. Since this took longer than anticipated, it was already past bedtime by the time the room was ready.

Max and Molly were excited by the change, and Max insisted that he did want Molly to sleep in his room. Having not slept well the night before, Max was a little on the cranky side and Molly was heading towards melt-down mode. The bedtime routine was a little rocky, but we read stories and sang songs and said prayers and attempted to tuck everyone into bed. Unfortunately, Molly was having one of those "I don't want to go to sleep" nights and started howling when I started walking away from the crib. Then Max, who was definitely overtired, started crying because Molly was crying. Dad and I spent the next half hour trying to settle everyone down, but by that time Max and Molly were too worked up to sleep.

Dad ended up bringing Max downstairs to read with Mama, while Molly fell sleep. Left to her own devices, Molly promptly corked out and we took Max up to bed. I think it took three more rounds of tucking in (and lots of sniffling and whining) before Max finally fell asleep. I heard a little bit of whimpering here and there throughout the night, but nobody woke up completely. They slept in their room until 5 a.m., when Molly decided it was time to start her day. I went and retrieved her from the crib, gave Max a kiss and told him to go back to sleep (which he actually did), then brought Molly back to our room. After she had her breakfast milk, she agreed to go back to sleep with Mama for another hour or so.

While the new room situation wasn't a rousing success, it wasn't a complete failure either. I'm sure that, like anything else, they'll get used to the new setup and routine in a few days. It's just making it through those few days which is always tough! I have to say, it was SO nice to be able to read in bed or flip channels on the bedroom TV. Although, as nice as it was to have our bedroom to ourselves, I actually kind of missed seeing our little girl asleep in her crib at the foot of our bed. I won't wake up to a cheery little face peeking at me over the crib rail any more or laugh at Molly popping up and down in the crib like a little gopher as she plays peek-a-boo with me.