Making room for one more. (And toddler sleep patterns.)

We almost gave up our guest room. We almost put the baby in Addie's room (and kicked Addie out) which is essentially a walk in-closet in our room. But since I wake up at the sound of kids breathing, and I haven't slept well (in our room) since Addie was born, and was finding myself sleeping in the guest room too often. We still kicked Addie out, but made her room a little office for Paul. No pictures of that, but just imagine a little brown and tan office, full of computer stuff and files, a buffalo leg lamp, and a deer head mounted on the one and only wall that you can see from our room, (that's location I did not approve of), and that's Paul's office. 

We moved our craft/storage room to an old file room that we acquired from the business. We added a new wall and door to close off the old craft room and made that a shared room for the older two. We made Garrett's old room the new nursery. And the guest room stayed the same. 

It was a lot of work, but went a lot faster than I expected it would. Thankfully the in-laws did the building part, my mom did most of the painting, and Paul and my mom did most of the room moving. So I supervised and worked on the details. (Perks of pregnancy.) 

Here is the finished nursery. The walls used to be light blue. We painted them gray with a yellow and gray stripe. All I did was the stripes. 

 There's only one of our 5 rooms that have a closet so we get creative. 

I love decorating and redecorating rooms. I can't imagine what I'd do if we had big rooms for the kids, so for now it's probably good that they're really small. I pointed out this time around that in three years I did Garrett's room twice, Addie's room twice, the new nursery, and the toddlers' room both complete. As well as changing our second living room into a playroom, and I've changed the guest room twice. And I've never actually completed the master bedroom. I don't know why. But maybe that'll be my project after the baby is born and I have all the time in the world. 

Anyway, here is the toddlers woodlands themed room. My inspiration for this room was Garrett's bed that frustrated me for 5 months. We bought a nicer mattress than the standard IKEA ones, and when we got the bed fully put together and put the mattress on, it was too thick for him to be able to lay on top safely. We almost bought an IKEA one, but then I realized 4 or 5 inches of wood above the mattress was not enough to keep the kids safe who would inevitably climb on the bed and push each other off. So I went to Pinterest for Plan B. And found so many cute treehouse themed beds made using this bed that we got at IKEA. Paul made it all come together and I couldn't be happier with it. The treehouse façade is in two pieces and they lift off of the frame. Not easy enough that the kids can lift them off, but easy enough for us to remove to change sheets or grab Garrett in an emergency. And Garrett loves it! 

Here's the before:

And the afters:

The wall colors in this room are a little crazy. We didn't want to buy any paint so we went with what we had. Just enough green for the two big walls, and barely enough light blue for the wall behind the treehouse. I was going to do the other wall tan, but Garrett had insisted for weeks before we even started construction that he wanted a red wall. Lucky for him, we had red paint so I just went with it. And I actually think it looks really cute.

I love this room. And the kids have so much fun in here. If they wake up too early I tell them to get some books and climb under the bed and read, and they do it! And I often find them playing in there when I think they're in the playroom. Fortunately, all the fun stuff hasn't become a sleep distraction. Since these pictures were taken, we have now converted Addie's bed to a toddler bed. Because after the first couple of weeks of sharing a room and talking each other to sleep, Addie was getting a little restless. Garrett would fall asleep, or want to fall asleep, and Addie was keeping him awake. We'd hear him telling her to be quiet. Then she would get frustrated and cry. It went on and on and eventually Addie was in tears every night and Garrett was exhausted and mad. Sometimes for up to two hours we would listen to this. For some reason I thought it would be worth a try to switch her to her toddler bed. Maybe to make her feel like she had the same freedoms that Garrett had even though I hoped she wouldn't abuse them. Well, the falling asleep part has been amazing. She hasn't gotten out of her bed once. And we switched her about a week ago. They chit chat a little and both drift off to sleep. But just about every other night now, Addie has woken up between 3 and 4 AM calling out for a drink. Even then, she doesn't get out of her bed, she just calls for us to bring her something. It's frustrating, but we can quiet her down and she falls right back to sleep. Garrett always sleeps through her early morning requests. And he still almost always falls asleep first, and sleeps in longer. If only every child slept as well as he always has... 

Anyway, I guess we're pretty much ready.