Twins and Montessori

I've had this post sitting in my draft folder for awhile just waiting for me to add the last finishing touches. I hope you enjoy reading and seeing what we have done and enjoyed. Meanwhile I'm still working on that toileting post.

I love the idea of the floor bed. My girls were 5 almost 6 months when I started searching the Internet on what parents were doing for children or twins the same age as A & G. Throughout my Internet search I found myself returning to Montessori related sites. Obviously something about Montessori called to me on a number of levels. I was hooked. I borrowed every Montessori book from the library and began to include more Montessori activities, spaces and thinking into our lives.

As A & G were close to 6 months we had already purchased cots, and honestly if I could do it all over again, I would not have brought cots. Alias we were owners of not one, but two cots, by this stage. Additionally, A & G had spent 6ish months sleeping and napping in them. Even though this was the case I still thought we could incorporate more Montessori inspired spaces into our home.

If you have been following this blog, you may know we are currently renting. We sold our house almost a year ago. We own vacant land and have plans to build a new custom designed home that will work for us. We currently rent a bigger house which has 4 bedrooms. Our previous house had three bedrooms, but we had loads of storage, a whole utility room, and two double garages. Completely over the top! In five years we managed to use all the space. When we sold our house and started looking at our renting and storage options it ended up been cheaper to rent a larger house (say four bedrooms) compared to renting a smaller house (2 bedroom) and paying for storage.

So, what if we could have one room with the cots and the other with floor beds? Why not? We certainly have the space, it just wasn't used wisely.

For ease of reference I will be calling our houses (nicknamed after the street names) as follows

Duffy - our old home we sold

Lachie - house we are renting

Brady - for future referent our new home, when it is finally built.

So here goes, some pictures of the ever evolving sleeping spaces in our house(s).

Here is the bedroom the girls had at Duffy. Pretty.

At Lachie, a month after we moved. We had to buy an extra cot.... so now we have two cots ... What a mess! Hardly a beautiful space for babies and nothing like what we had at Duffy. Where's the storage??

At Duffy - The spare room. Pretty.

At Lachie - Spare room set up for emergency sleeping arrangements. Every parent(s) of multiples should have one. A portacot for the baby and a single mattress for the parent on duty. Could be worst. I know for a fact that mattress is comfortable.

At Lachie - Spare room another view of the room storing all the bits and pieces, including a queen mattress for the bed we haven't set up. Wait a minute, what about tiding up this spare room and converting it to a Montessori space. Thinking about it I have some lovely pieces stashed in boxes.

My first attempt. Mattress still leaning against the wall. Yes, that mattress has got to go. Do you see the wall decals? Now take a look at the picture of the spare room at Duffy and take a close look at the pictures above the bed. Yes you guessed it, I used removable wall decals and placed them on canvas. Wall decals re-purposed for our new Montessori space.

The portacot made another reappearance to contain my early crawler (G) in one location for more than 30 seconds. Meanwhile I'm cleaning out the junk room and reassembling the bed so the mattress can be relocated.