Musical Beds

Bedtime in our house goes pretty smoothly.  The kids usually don’t throw too many fits.  From time to time we have issues in the middle of the night with kids not sleeping.  In November I spent very few nights in my own bed all night (I usually ended up in Vincent or Joel’s bed or someone ends up in our bed) but it could be so much worse.  Since we moved into this house we have had a few different sleeping arrangements.  We thought we had finally settled into Joel and Vincent sharing a room and Cecilia sleeping in a different room in her crib.  This went well until mid-November when it was time for bedtime prayers Cecilia would either go hide in the boys’ closet or lay in one of their beds and refuse to move.

On Saturday November 16th Cecilia climbed into Joel’s bed and was insisting she was going to sleep there.  Her exact words when I went to get her out of his bed were “No, I sleep Joel-e’s bed!”  Neither Brad nor I felt like arguing with her, but she can’t sleep with Joel.  He tosses and turns and has enough trouble getting to sleep without Cecilia’s help.  I compromised with telling her she could sleep in Vincent’s bed with him.  Vincent wasn’t thrilled until I promised to move her in the middle of the night. 

After a couple nights of doing this and her being mad about being in a crib in the morning we needed a new strategy.  I put the crib mattress on the floor thinking Cecilia could sleep there.  She threw a fit and said she was sleeping in Vincent’s bed.  Again it wasn’t worth a fight, so Vincent slept on the crib mattress for a few hours and then I switched them before I went to bed.  Cecilia would roll off the mattress in the middle of the night, so it was not a perfect system.  Around this time she also started only napping in Vincent’s bed.  As the nights went by that week we started using the inflatable mattress and all the kids took turns sleeping on it (they think it is cool) and rotating beds.  One night Cecilia rolled out of Vincent’s bed and landed on top of his head on the air mattress.  Both were still sound asleep when I found them.  They all were doing really well sleeping in one room.  They wouldn’t talk at night or anything.   But Cecilia was getting up earlier than usual and Vincent needed to go to bed earlier than everyone else.

My three sleeping beauties who actually love sleeping in the same room.

We have tried to convince Cecilia to use the full sized bed in her room, but we have not been successful.  Now not only has Cecilia successfully taken over Vincent’s bed but she has kicked him out of his room!  She sleeps in his bed and proudly tell everyone “I sleep in Vincent bed!”  Vincent is now sleeping in her room with girly pictures hanging on the wall.  We let him take his comforter with Lightning McQueen and Mater on it.  Cecilia wasn’t thrilled about that, but she was happy to have her blankets.  It has all worked out because Vincent is getting to bed early and getting his own story and not a “baby” story.  Someday the twins won’t be able to share a room and Vincent will notice his new room looks girly, but until then we are going to just go with the flow!

This spring we had to change things up again, but that is in another post that is coming. The fact that my children all like to share a room makes things a difficult because I can only fit so many beds in a room.