Our Transition to a Big Boy Room (and Bed)

The minute we found out that we were expecting our second child, we knew that a room transition would be a factor in our older son's bedroom.  Our older son (now 2) was in the nursery, which is just that.  It has beautiful built-in shelves and dressers and is just the right size for one lil bambino (or child).  As the oldest child, he has the luxery of getting first grabs at our larger bedroom.  Given the small age difference (18 months), we knew that we needed to have a crib in the new room and were fortunate enough to have enough room for both a crib and a queen bed (for when he was ready to transition into a "big boy bed").  We wanted to make this room boy'ish and when we found out baby #2 was also a boy, we decided to go all out and use St. Louis Cardinal's and generic baseball them around the room.  Our last name happens to start with a C (Cunningham) and so we were also able to incorporate that above the crib in a Cardinal's type fashion.  We decided to have both the bed and the crib in the room as we have hopes of having more children and when that happens, our younger boy will be moving on over to share a room with Big Brother (and we hope that he's still in the crib age at that time too lol).

I am so excited to have finally finished the "big boy room".  I expected our older son to have a difficult time leaving his old room so I started the new room a couple months before the baby was born.  I put his toys in there and we had play time in there as often as possible.  I then started shifting his clothes into the dresser in the new room so every morning our routine would be to get dressed in the room.  Toddlers begin having some vivid dreams (including nightmares) and are often fearful of an unfamiliar area when they wake up in the middle of the night (we've all been there... staying the night at a friend's, waking up in the middle of the night and having NO idea where you are until you are re-oriented and lucid enough to remember that you are at your friend's house).  Well, as a toddler, this is espeically terrifying, which is why it's important to allow the child to get to know their new room pretty well before the room transition takes place.

I had a lot of advice about when and how and where and how quickly, etc..., to transition our son into his new room.  Some great advice, some old school and not so great.  Hearts are all in the right place.  But I knew from my own experience in working with young children and with all the children I've had in my life before what our chosen method would be.  Our boys are very big for their age (each starting out just over 10lbs at birth and growing at the same rate as other kids... so doubling their weight at 6 months makes them 20lb... tripling at 1 year makes them 30... Quadrupling at 2 years... 40lb, etc...) and so many people who are giving said advice tend to forget just how young our lil buddy is.  (He turned 2 on November 17... our second is 6 months old... they look like they're 4 and 1).  Here were our rules to transition:

1.) Make it gradual.  Familiarize him with his room before making him sleep there in the dark at peak nightmare age.

2.) Do not switch rooms within a month of the new baby being born (so a month before or a month after) as that is a trauma in and of itself for a young child.  That is enough of a transition.

3.) Do not force him to sleep in a big boy bed (unless he chooses) when changing the room... And do not take away paci, blankie, etc... which are good transition safety items that can gradually be removed after he's comfortable in his new place.  If he wants his crib, allow him to have that security too (I openly wanted to keep him in his crib until he climbed out or was potty trained... I didn't ge tmy way, which I'll explain later).

4.) Wait a couple weeks to sleep new baby in his old room as to not allow him to think the new baby is taking ONE MORE THING away from him (first he has to share his mommy and daddy, then his toys, then his books, etc... NOT MY ROOM!!!!).

We were fortunate enough to have thet luxury to be able to follow these rules and it worked out very well for us.  If he were older (2.5-3 I would have been less rigid about them (especially the big boy bed and paci ones) but at 18mo-2yr, gradual changes are so important in order to have smooth transitions.

One of the ways that we got him used to sleeping in there was to put him in there (the crib) during nap time.  Since it was light in there, this was less scary for him and he was less reluctant to sleep in there (it still sometimes was a struggle).  Last week, though, (10 days after his 2nd birthday), he was having coughing fits in his crib and so I picked him up and brought him to his big boy bed so that I could lay with him and keep him on his side and/or propped up.  Never did I imagine that that was how he transitioned into his big boy bed.  The next night he requested going into his "ball room" and "big bed" and so we laid down together.  He loved it.  He's been in there every night since and has not seemed to look back.

So here is the new room!!!