Gerritt's New Bed

Gerritt's new bed


A few finishing touches - a blue star nightlight & Dora pillow (a present from Korean grandma)

We are in the process of restructuring our family life. This time I am not waiting until the last minute & doing a few major changes earlier in pregnancy. Two main things we are working on right now are getting Sophia to sleep through the night & moving her out of my bed into her own bedroom.
It all started with me noticing a few tiny white spots on Sophia's front teeth. Could it be early tooth decay? Certainly drinking formula before bedtime & multiple times during the night couldn't be good for her. She is almost 2 years old. She is healthy & chubby. Drinking milk at night is not a necessity for her, but more of a habit. So Monday was the first night I've started a new bedtime & sleeping routine to break Sophia's sleep association with a bottle. I slept right next to her & she woke up 5 times asking for her bottle. Needless to say, I was utterly exhausted & had to call in sick to work the next day.
The following night she woke up only once around 1 am & cried for about 30 minutes, then went back to sleep. My husband was sleeping next to her crib, so she didn't cry alone. Sophia still continued to wake up once or twice a night for the next few days, but didn't cry for long. Once she received reassurance that Daddy was there she would promptly fall back to sleep. We should have done this way sooner!
Since I called in sick to work & my nanny still came, I've decided not to waste a day completely. After sleeping in for a few hours, Gerritt & I made a trip to Ikea to buy him his "special, big-boy" bed. I preselected everything from bed to sheets & mattress on line prior to leaving the house, so all we had to do was find the items in the store & write down their warehouse pick-up location. What could have been a day-long project, took us just a little over 3 hours (that includes a lunch stop at the Ikea restaurant for my favorite Swedish meatballs with lingonberry sause!). Gerritt was very proud to be my helper for the day & didn't get cranky even though he had to postpone his afternoon nap by a few hours. I couldn't load the heavy bed box into the car by myself & lucked out by getting free help from strangers. Theoretically, the Ikea trips should only be done with husbands, but I took my chances (once I decide to do something, I will accomplish the goal whatever it takes). My husband stayed up until 1 am assembling the bed, but it was worth it!
My hope is that Gerritt & Sophia will share this bed eventually (once Sophia is old enough to understand staying put). Although we live in a 4-bedroom house, with my Mom moving in & needing a private room of her own & a new baby coming, we suddenly don't have as much space as we thought we did.