Sleeping Arrangement Update

Almost a month ago, we wrote about our sleeping arrangements. The girls were sleeping in the same room as us and had just outgrown the bassinet of the Pack n Play. They were also too big for the cradle that Agnes’ cousin lent us, and we were asking when people moved their kids out of their room. We’re quite grateful for the wide range of responses that we received.

Since that time, we decided that the crib would be too big for our room, but that we could put both the Pack n Play and the cradle in our room at the same time. We had to separate the girls, who had been sleeping together up until that point, but that was okay. Keeping them separate makes them less likely to wake each other up. We soon found we had another problem though. They make a lot of noise in their sleep. A lot. Grunting, snuffling and short cries. These sounds may precede when they actually need us by up to an hour, and they were keeping us (mainly Agnes) up all night. Agnes had taken to sleeping in a separate room.

Last weekend we finally got around to assembling our cribs in the nursery. Jeremy gave me an estimate of about two hours to assemble one and he wasn’t far off. We had two to assemble. The first took about two and a half hours, the second about an hour and a half. I’m glad to say that the instructions were very clear, and the parts were made very precisely. There was no hair-pulling frustration like there can be with Ikea furniture when the pre-drilled holes don’t quite line up. We only encountered two problems: the instructions for attaching the runner for the drawer showed four wood screws holding it in place. Only three are actually supposed to be used, and they fit in two different positions. On the first crib, I chose the wrong position and the drawer slightly blocked the drop gate from sliding down all the way. That was pretty easy to fix. The other problem was putting the mattress springs in place. It can be pretty difficult without an extra set of hands. On the second crib, I asked Agnes to help hold things in place for just a few moments while I put in the screws.

We moved Eleanor to her crib right away. On her crib we put a waterproof pad, a fitted sheet, the Ultimate Crib Sheet, and finally some burp cloths before putting her in. So far, she hasn’t soaked anything through the Ultimate Crib Sheet. Eleanor gets the Symphony in Motion mobile. She can be quite fascinated with it, tracking each animal as it circles around, and then turning her head to catch the next one as it comes into view. It plays a selection of Bach, Mozart and Beethoveen. The mobile sounds nice enough from inside the nursery, but from the home office next to the nursery, it sounds like there’s an ice cream truck constantly circling the house.

We built Miranda’s crib as well. We know that she also likes the Symphony in Motion mobile, but we don’t have two of them. We’re not quite sure how that would work — they would both be playing at the same time and the sound would probably mix in unpleasant ways. We need to give that one more thought. Instead, Miranda has a mirror that she looks at. I just hope we’re not raising a budding narcissist. Anyway, Miranda doesn’t spend nearly as much time in her crib as Eleanor does. We’re still finding that when Miranda lies down soon after eating, she’ll spit up. She’s been sleeping in her carseat where she can sit up more. It was just last night we started trying to get her to sleep in her crib more.

It wasn’t on the list of features that we were looking for in a crib, but one nice thing about them is that they have wheels. Our nursery is pretty small, and the only room arrangement we could come up with has Miranda’s crib blocking the closet that stores things like our supply of diapers and wipes. Fortunately, her crib rolls out of the way very easily.