The Big Boy Room

Max has graduated to his own big boy room.  We started setting up his new room in January in anticipation of eventually needing to free up the crib for Will's arrival.  But we weren't overly anxious to move Max into a big boy bed for a number of reasons.  1) He has always been such a great sleeper in the crib.  2) There wasn't a real hurry since we knew Will would be in the bassinet in our bedroom for the first few months anyway.  and 3) Max was still my baby too - he wasn't even 2-years-old yet and deserved to still get to sleep in his crib.  But then things changed. 

After Will arrived, Max started waking up every night and refusing to go back to sleep in his crib.  He would only go back to sleep if we brought him into our room.  We weren't too happy about bringing him into our bed because we didn't want to mess up his sleep routine and create problems down the road (like we did with Ellie).  But since we were only getting 1 or 2 hours of sleep at a time with Will, we did not have the extra energy to fight Max back into the crib...so into our bed he went.  This lasted for about 6 weeks.  Max started to improve a little and would sleep through the night in the crib a few nights a week, but he was still coming into our bed the other nights.  I started putting him in his big boy bed for naps and he actually did really well, so we decided to try it out at night too, and he has done amazingly well.  He rarely comes into our room during the night, but if he does we'll let him into our bed for 20 minutes or so, then we take him back to his own bed and he goes right back to sleep. 

I think bringing home Will had more of an effect on Max than we thought it would.  Max had always been the baby, and then suddenly there was a new little guy taking our attention.  He didn't act jealous or try to hurt Will, but I think he just needed extra mommy and daddy attention at night.  Now Max is back to being our best sleeper.  He can get himself out of bed after naps (an extra perk for Mommy to not have to walk upstairs to lift him out of the crib) and in the morning.  He'll come into our room in the morning very quietly (so as not to wake Will) and peek into the bathroom where one of us is getting ready and give us a little, "Hi."  Then he is ready to go downstairs and have eggs with Dad (their morning routine).

And Max's new bed is pretty cool.  We got him bunk beds with the full size bed on the bottom.  We've moved the ladder away from the bed for now, because I'm still too nervous to let him climb up by himself, since he definitely can't climb down by himself yet.  The full size bottom bunk is great at bed time for cuddling and reading stories.  There have been many nights where Jason will have both Max and Ellie in there reading bedtime stories while I finish up feeding Will and getting him to sleep, and it's a lot more comfortable than everyone trying to squeeze onto Ellie's little twin bed.  Ellie also tells us that some day she'll just go into Max's room and sleep on his top bunk if she gets scared in her own room...we'll see about that.