The girls’ room is at the back of our house which you reach by walking through our office. Eleanor’s crib is placed where she can see us in the office from the end of her crib. She just needed to look out from their doorway and through the glass panes of the office door. Miranda’s crib has a view out of their doorway as well, but it’s angled in a way that she can’t see the office.
At night, when we put the girls in their cribs to sleep, Eleanor often sat up and looked for us in the office. If we were there, she kept on crying. If we weren’t, she settled down to sleep pretty quickly. We thought it would be a good idea to cover the window panes of the office door so she couldn’t tell we were there.
It turns out this wasn’t enough. Eleanor could still tell when there was something going on in the office around the edges of those pieces of paper. It was enough to convince her that there was someone there to respond to her. Finally, we went out and bought a cheap window shade–it’s essentially a long piece of paper folded like an accordion with an adhesive strip at one end. We used it to cover the whole door.
Now, if we keep the lights off in the office it seems that Eleanor can no longer tell we’re there.