Evolving Spaces - Update

I wrote a post earlier on the floor bed and different spaces I have within my home (you can read it here.) Well everything and I do mean everything has changed.

Why, you ask?  The floor beds were somewhat successful for day time naps, however for night time sleeps it did not work for us. I believe if they were on floor beds from birth or say 3 or 4 months, it would have been successful. To keep Dad Dad and I sane we went back to cots. Sigh. I am not deterred though. Should I be lucky enough to have another child I would start with a either a moses basket on the floor in our room or floor bed from the very beginning.

What changes have I made? I swapped rooms around for one. The room with the cots, is based on the west side of the house and in summer the room would get very hot. We would have the windows open and the ceiling fan swirling to keep the girls cool in summer. The room the floor beds were in is now the room they sleep in and the room the cots were in is now where one floor bed is located.

OK so here are some pictures.
 

The new cot room

This is the room they sleep in. You will note they sleep is cots. I have tried removing one side of the cot. This didn't work out so great for us either. A & G are very agile and able to get into and out of their cots. It started with laughter and ended in tears when one sibling joined their sibling and gave them a good shove.  Something for us to work on. The tepee was my gift to them for their first birthday. Two cots and a tepee (and a few toys/books) are the only items in this room.




The Old Cot Room

This is the room they use to sleep in (remember in my previous post it was the rather messy room.) They slove this room. They come in here together or alone. Sit on the floor bed, roll around, read, talk and play with their toys. Since taking these pictures I have placed a mirror to the left, just beside the floor bed. I've also added a small basket in front of the mirror which holds their hairbrush.

I dress both girls in here. When we leave the house this is the room we make our way to. I sit on the floor cross legged, and one child sits on my lap, the other collects their shoes (this is a special task.)

I brush the hair of the child in my lap and sing a song about dressing and grooming . When I finish brushing the hair of the child in my lap, she joins her sister to sit on the side of the mattress. I put socks and shoes on both A & G, then brush the hair of the second child. Then we are ready to go. This room is beside the garage. Our outings involve either a car or collecting a pram (one of those huge twin prams that doesn't fit in the house), so we always exit our house via the garage.

Storage with a few of their favourite things and their shoes.



 

A chair for me, a table, tissues, a basket for storage and the wooden plane.

Night time sleep and naps

Today we are out of routine. We went to the shopping centre to buy a slow cooker and replacement printer cartridge. The outing was very pleasant. Except the girls fell asleep in the car on the way home. To be precise they fell asleep at the set of lights, a mere 2 km from our house. Not long enough to be considered a nap. I tried to remove them from the car asleep, to no avail. So the mini, mini power nap has been enough to keep them going for another two hours.

I've placed them in their beds, in the vain hope that they will play and then fall asleep. Over tired babies are every mother's nightmare.

Day time naps
When they were younger and had just past the sleepy newborn stage and become infants, around 12 weeks, I had a real battle with day time naps. There is a wealth of information on night time sleeping, but information on daytime naps were for me harder to locate. In hindsight I made all the mistakes, over stimulating them by picking them up because they cried, not picking up on their tired signs. In truth, I had no idea what tired signs to look for, and misinterpreted their different cries. A cry was a cry to me. As a result I spent a lot of time with crying babies. Over time I became to recognise the difference, don't ask me how, one day it clicked into place for day time naps. We did keep a routine diary and this did help to establish an ideal time to put them down for naps.


Nighttime sleeps
We were blessed with babies that slept through the night early, between 12 and 16 weeks. The first point I will make is the babies were breast feed until 12 weeks, and then we changed to formula feeding.

Between 12 and 16 weeks they decided that they would drink most of their night time bottle. We always gave a full bottle (260 mls) and let them drink as much as they wanted. The first time this happened I  had a sleepless night, they slept fine, but I just struggled to come to terms with them drinking 220 to 260 mls in one sitting. I was up checking on them every few hours. I also tried to give them a night feed, which upset them, they didn't drink and were very cranky about been woken up. Eventually I realised I had to step back, if they wanted to drink a full bottle and sleep the night through, who was I to interfere? They continued to sleep through but it didn't stop the nighttime parent visits to see if they were fine.

So as you can read for the above, whilst they were sleeping through the night it took a long time for our day time naps to fall into place. Two babies who cried most of the day was hard work. But I still consider myself lucky, because there just might be parents out there struggling with night and day sleep.

P.S       15 minutes after been put in their cots they are sleeping.
P.S.S    Forgot to buy the printer cartridge (big sigh)