I would like to introduce you to our little house. It has been a great starter home, and really it's not THAT small. It's a 3 bedroom house with a completely finished basement that has a rec room as well as another room that could be a guest room or craft room or some such thing. Most of these photos are from our house listing when we sold the house.
We've lived in this house for what I think will likely be the most dramatically changing years of our lives. We've been here for 4.5 years. In that time we got married and had THREE kids. Many many changes happened in this house.
Now, I'd like to play a little game. Here's how it will work. I will show you a photo of a room - you will guess what purpose this room currently serves us, and then I will tell you if you are right or wrong.
Photo 1 - what's your guess?
A room for twins to sleep in? Ha! I think we've managed to get them both asleep in here at the same time a handful of times, and none of those have been in the last 2-3 months. I'm not sure why we still have 2 cribs in here except that we may as well leave the second one there until our move. Both babies sleep in this room, just not at the same time. These babies wake each other up every time they wake in the night. They do not remotely follow this whole "the babies won't wake each other" thing that advice about sleeping multiples seem to assume is a given.
That chair? Ugly but SO comfortable to sleep/nurse in. See those wings? It holds up my head instead of letting it loll to the side and get a crick that takes the rest of the day to get rid of.
Photo 2
Basement rec room you say? Of course, but it also doubles as my husband's bedroom. Why? Because after 5 months of waking many many times a night, he was no longer functioning. This is obviously an issue for work (and we NEED him to have a job) but also, on the weekends when he's home, I want him to be actively taking on some of the burden, something he can't do if he is too exhausted to function.
Photo 3
Our bedroom - yes, but it doesn't look remotely like this. First of all, at the base of the bed there permanently lives a playpen. Generally that's where Quinn sleeps because he is the SLIGHTLY heavier sleeper.
What generally happens is that Quinn sleeps in the playpen until he wakes up in the night after I've gone to sleep. At that point I bring him into bed with him to nurse and immediately fall asleep. He spends the remainder of the night in bed with me. I would SNEAK in for fear of waking up Quinn (hopefully I remembered to get some PJs out of my room before he went to bed) and just lie on the bed and try to sleep. I hate falling asleep without reading to unwind.
This is why I was in such a hurry to get a bigger house. Why I was willing to move in the winter and sell in December. When we move in, we are starting hard core sleep training. I have no issues with cry it out - with a few caveats. I can't handle letting them scream when they're in pain so there's always some regression during teething time. Also, I also don't think it's fair to let them suffer through the other baby's crying. In the new house they will have their own rooms and we can really get things back in order.
This past week I was sick and not only was I was afraid to sneak into my room at bedtime, I knew that my coughing would wake him up. So you know what I did? I found somewhere else to sleep, where I could still hear all 3 kids if they woke up and needed me.
Photo 4
My "nest" in the stairwell. I've been starting my nights here and eventually spending the remainder of the night split between my bed with quinn and the chair in the nursery nursing. The unexpected bonus, reading before sleep again, which I really really enjoy and missed (couldn't risk turning on a light and waking quinn. heck, i couldn't risk finding my book and book light and turning them on for fear of waking him up). I'm tired folks, and the stress of the move on top of it all is making me fed up and frustrated.
Less than a month to go. Less than a month to go. Less than a month to go.
