After moving to Washington we decided to rent a beautiful yellow home with white window shutters, hard wood floors but carpet in the bedrooms and a yard worth bragging about, everything I have dreamed of! It was perfect, especially since we weren't sure exactly how long we would be here, considering we moved out here to follow my husbands job so there is always a chance we could up and move again! What we didn't think about is that our perfectly sized two bedroom could start to feel small after deciding to add a third member to our family. This weekend we were able to shop, move the rooms around and make our home feel large again!
Our Room:
White Bedside Table - Ikea
Down Comforter - Ikea
Grey Blanket + Matching pillow Shams - Ikea
Grey Throw Pillows - Target
Grey Sheets - Target
Einstein Bulb - Ikea
Shelf - Ikea
Baby Monitoring System - Motorola 7 in.
Oil Diffuser - Young Living
Sketched Family Portrait - @sketchedinmemories
(Unseen - Vintage Dresser, 21 in. TV for netflix!)
One important aspect of our room is where we will have the baby sleep, by switching rooms we lost loads of extra space but without a doubt we knew we wanted to keep baby in our room for those first few months of constant night nursing. After experimenting with seemingly every different kind of contraption in the world after Carter was born, we came across the rock - n - play and it worked like a charm. We got a new one for the new baby and snuck it in next to my side of the bed!
The last item that we HAD to have (in both our room and Carters room) was our ever so faithful Latchy Catchy! This tiny device attaches itself to your door knobs on either side of the door allowing you to push open the door without twisting the door knob and making noise that could potentially wake up your kiddos. We got one for Carters room when he was only a few months old and it has drastically changed our nighttime experience. Having the ability to go in and out of your children's bedrooms silently, rather than feeling the pressure not to check on them for the fear of waking them up, is more comforting than I can put into words.
The "Baby Corner"
Because we won't be finding out the gender until the baby is born we always try to stick to neutrals. The most frequently asked question when we tell people we are waiting is "How can you get anything ready without knowing??" Well.. this is how! I set up a nursery just for fun really, the baby will be with us in our room the first few months so if I truly desired loads of "gender specific colors" I could easily decorate after the baby decides to join us. If I am being honest, I am not a fan of using specific colors to associate gender in the first place! Something that hurt me after Carter was born was when we put him in red and went to the store, I was told that he needed more blue in order for people to recognize him as a boy otherwise they wouldn't feel comfortable congratulating me on my newborn.. what?? I shouldn't have to put my son in any color to be "adequate enough" for congratulations. Like wise I shouldn't have to put a little girl of mine in a bow every day for people to recognize her as a girl, if I decide to that should be just fine, if I decide against it I shouldn't feel like I am doing my child an injustice. Lets be honest here, babies look like babies. There simply is no sure fire way of knowing whether you are looking at a boy or a girl, asking what the person has had if you are unsure shouldn't come as a surprise or offend anyone. If I was ever asked, and I still am, whether Carter was a boy or a girl I answer with a smile. The person asking is not trying to ruin your day or say anything derogatory towards your little ones, be happy they have chosen to take an interest in them in the first place! After hearing this I knew that I would do my best to unassociate gender roles within our house hold as much as possible!
The "Carter Corner" and his Big Boy Bed!
Moving Carter from his crib is nothing new in his world. We decided to test the waters and get rid of his crib at 12 months and to our surprise, both AJ and I feel it is one of the better decisions we have made in the aspect of parenting thus far! Every time that he woke at night or during a nap he seemed to be immediately flustered and screamed for our attention, he was unable to wake up and put himself back to sleep and we had decided that letting him cry through this struggle was not what we wanted to do. We started by taking his crib mattress out of his crib and placing it on the floor during naps before cutting the crib cold turkey, and after it went so well we had the crib taken down within days!
Carter started sleeping in an Ikea extendable sized mattress (i.e. a mattress that can lengthen out to the size of a twin) on the floor from then on out! Like magic he would wake up, roll over and continue sleeping. Taking the bars away from around him brought him peace and made him feel less trapped! The floor bed was a great transitional tool as he learned to keep from falling out of bed without taking large falls. If he did fall from his bed he was all of maybe 2 inches off the floor and could pick himself up and fix himself easily. When we decided to change rooms this weekend we knew that he would be ready to make the transition into his "big boy bed" and just as we thought, he slept all night last night with ease!
If you are considering creating a floor mattress or switching your toddler to a toddler bed be sure to baby proof the room before doing anything, babies can get into so many things that we can't see that could be potentially dangerous to their curious selves. Get down on your hands and knees, at their eye level and crawl around the space and take note of everything that you see that you wish to make changes to. As an example I included the list of things that we did to baby proof Carters room before allowing him to roam around without our constant watch.
- cover all the open outlets, as an extra precaution (only if you are trained) turn the fuse off in the outlets to avoid any electricity reaching them at all
- purchase a tool that can keep your closet doors shut
- if you have any chemicals within reach remove them entirely from the room
- hook all furniture to the wall to keep if from falling on your children
- baby proof all dresser drawers
- take any toys with small pieces, and stuffed animals with plastic eyes out of the room and replace them with wooden toys and stuffed animals with sewn eyes
- invest in a high quality monitoring system, this was super important to us! If we were going to allow him free reign I wanted to be able to see what he was getting into at all times. We purchased a Motorola 7 inch monitor that allows us to see his entire room, speak to him, play music, see the temp, take photos and is NOT wifi capable. Getting a monitoring system that is NOT wifi capable will keep hackers out of hacking into your video feed and potentially talking to your children without you even knowing.
There is still so much more decorating to be had and work to be done but our start feels fresh and is making our pregnancy seem more and more real each and every day.
-T
| @skethedinmemories | http://www.latchycatchy.com/ & @latchycatchy |
Loved this post! I had a rock n play for my daughter and that's what she slept in during the night. I loved that thing.
ReplyDelete