Big Girls Don't Cry

To appease my nesting instinct to prepare for Baby 2.0 I had to do some decorating in our home.  Since we are recycling our nursery that we decorated gender neutral with the intention of rotating all of our future babes through it, I got to decorate a big girl room for Miss M.  We wanted to make the switch early enough so that M didn't feel outcast by the new baby from the only room she remembers sleeping in since birth (she was in our room in a bassinet until she was 3 months old).  It made sense with timing and the start of my third trimester to make the switch around her 2nd birthday as sort of a gift to her.  She got to come with us furniture shopping and jump on the beds a bit as we picked out her furniture in early February and I dragged her on quite a few trips to Target until we stumbled across some bedding we (ok, mostly I) fell in love with.

M has always been infatuated with horses on carousels and with the live versions in general since her first pony ride last fall.  If she sees a horse (she says it in Spanish: caballo) she always yells, "NEEEIGGGH!" before she actually calls it a horse.  When I saw this horse bedding at Target I knew she had to have it.  She was napping the first time we "shopped" for it, but I totally took her back to the store awake to see if she liked it and she did.  A.R. thinks I'm pushing my love of horses on her.  I say it's in her blood and I swear horse lovers have an extra gene to be just crazy enough to want to ride the magnificant creatures that they are.  M has that gene.  It was quite evident when we visited my friend in NC and she got to ride her first real horse. :)  Definitely a proud Mami moment for me!

Ok, back to the subject.  M came with us to Home Depot to pick up paint swatches.  We decided on an awful Pepto Bismal pink (I'm more of a purple kind of gal) called Pretty in Pink from the Disney line of Behr paints.  It matches her bedding perfectly and M LOVES her pink room, so that's all that matters.  I'll get to paint a room purple in that house some day!  The night A.R. painted it we let her do a few rolls on the wall with the paint roller and she was so proud of herself.  After it was painted she ran around the room doing her own happy dance as her signature of approval.  Her furniture was delivered the first weekend in March and she got so excited once I put her horse bedding on her bed and A.R. hung up the horse painting.  We had purchased wall decals to match, but made a fatal error in putting them where she could reach them.  "ick-her, Mami! ick-her!" ensued as she though they were giant stickers and pulled them all off the walls.  We bought another box of the decals and need to hang them up higher out of her reach this time :).

We had planned to let her just play in her new room for a couple weeks and let her sleep in it the first time for her birthday, but she was much too excited about it.  Every time we opened the door to her room to give her some play time in there she'd yell, "NEIGH!" and one night we just figured, why delay it?  She obviously loved the room and had figured out how to use the step stool to get up and down from the bottom bunk with no issues, so we took a leap of faith and on Daylight Savings Time eve let her sleep in her new room the first time.  She woke up twice, but was more disoriented than upset and quickly fell back asleep each time.  She never once cried for her old comfy crib converted to a toddler bed or her old room (the nursery).  On night #2 I told her to go to her room after brushing her teeth and she went straight to her new room without even a glance at the nursery across the hall ::tear::.  My big girl doesn't cry.  She moves on.  Once again Mami had a harder time with the transition than she did.  I think the hardest part for me was having her sleep in a room without a video monitor hooked up for the first time.  I admit I peaked in at her before I went to bed anyway, but man I miss that spy cam!

We opted to go more neutral with her furniture and got bunk beds as her new room is our biggest bedroom besides our master bedroom suite and should we have three children one day (we'll see how it goes with two little ones first!), two of them will share this room.  NO, we don't know what sex Baby 2.0 is.  My in-laws saw her new big girl room and automatically assumed we already know we're having a girl, but honestly we don't know.  We just figured we're investing in furniture that is going to last through high school and we know we'll eventually have two little ones in this room, so why spend the money on interim furniture.  If we end up having two boys and M is our only girl, we'll move her out of this room into her own room and repaint the room a boy color.  If we have a boy and then a girl, we would still expect M to share her room with her youngest sister and if we have another girl come June, SCORE- no extra painting for A.R.! And if we end up with just two little ones?  We have an extra guest bed and a spot for friends when M is of sleep over age.  Of course, the top bunk is off limits for quite awhile.  M doesn't even realize what it is at this point and we don't plan on showing her anytime soon.  I fear for our health insurance premiums once she's old enough to climb up top!  I do remember always wishing I had bunk beds when I was little, though, and I'm glad we can give that to our kids.