Mikaela and Liam are sharing a room for the first time tonight.
Back when Liam first moved out of our room, when he was about two and a quarter, we bought him a double bed. Not only would it allow us to lie down with him comfortably, as we knew we often still would, but we liked the idea of the 'sibling bed' - that eventually he'd be sharing with a little brother or sister.
But then it took us rather longer to provide him with a little brother or, as it happens, sister than we planned, and by the time she was approaching an age when she might share a bed with Liam, he was over the idea. She wriggled too much, basically. And there was the fact that unlike Liam, she slept in a cot, so she wasn't used to sharing a bed.
Today, we finally packed up Liam's double bed, and moved a set of 'lo-line' bunks into his room instead. They're king singles, partly because we still often end up lying down with one or t'other of them in the night (usually Mikaela of course) (and when I say 'we' I actually mean Chris). The other reason is that I was hesitant to go for the bunk idea because it makes it so much harder to sit up there with Liam at bed time. Having the king single makes that a lot more doable, because there's just a lot more space.
On the other hand, when we set them up we realised they take up a lot more of the room than we'd imagined. We knew that not much other furniture would fit in there, but we didn't realise just how dwarfed the space would be.
The room is still a work in progress. We've redone the wardrobe (which is not very big) with lots of drawers and just a little bit of hanging space, and we're hoping to get all the kids clothes into it. Liam got his undies, jamies, & t-shirts drawers sorted today, but there's still jumpers (sweaters, to American readers) & pants. And we've got Mikaela's clothes to sort through tomorrow. I'm trying to weed out the too-small clothes as we go.
Also, we need to get a reading light for Liam, so that he can read for half an hour or so after Mikaela is asleep, and some kind of shelving up there for him.
But the beds are in place, the kids are in the beds (and hopefully asleep - Kaely certainly is), and it's all systems go for their first night sharing. It should be interesting.
