{"id":786,"date":"2013-05-08T08:37:09","date_gmt":"2013-05-08T12:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=786"},"modified":"2013-12-16T14:23:13","modified_gmt":"2013-12-16T19:23:13","slug":"sisterly-sharing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/08\/sisterly-sharing\/","title":{"rendered":"Sisterly Sharing"},"content":{"rendered":"

About a year ago, we visited Florida from Ireland to look for what would become our new home when we moved back a few weeks later.\u00a0 Over 3 days, hubby and I visited close to 25 houses looking for one that would suit our family just right.\u00a0 I had very strict criteria, the biggest being location (I wanted to be walking distance to things we would need on a daily basis) but the next important being the floor plan.\u00a0 I did not want a house where my very young children would be completely separated from hubby and me.\u00a0 We found it nearly impossible to find a house where all bedrooms were together, in most houses (at least in our town) the master bedroom is on one side of the house and the other bedrooms are on the other.<\/p>\n

We finally settled on our house, despite the split floor plan for two reasons.\u00a0 For one, despite being on the entirely other side of the house, I can see one of the bedroom doors from my bed (through the foyer, TV room and long hallway) which we\u2019ve decided to designate at the baby nursery.\u00a0 The second reason was the fact that one of the bedrooms is HUGE, has its own bathroom and gigantic closet. Even though this bedroom is the farthest away from the master (through the foyer, TV room, kitchen and play room and past the door to the pool\u2026.opposite corner of the house), we decided to put Honeybun\u00a0and Sugarplum in the giant room together.<\/p>\n

I never expected to have my children sharing a room.\u00a0 I grew up with my own room and have always planned to have it this way for my children too.\u00a0 However, in a 4 bedroom house with 3 children, we would be left with no guest space meaning one of our children would have to relocate every time we had guests.\u00a0 Growing up, my sister always had to stay in my room when someone came to stay and we both hated it as we got older.\u00a0 It also makes me feel better having the girls together since they\u2019re so far away.\u00a0 I know if something happens in the night to one of the girls, the other one can call for me.<\/p>\n

Sharing a room has not been as tumultuous as I (or especially hubby) expected.\u00a0 I think at this point the girls really enjoy being together and I hope if we stay here they will appreciate all the space and privacy they have (from us, though not from each other) as they grow up. They have almost their own mini-suite that can be completely closed off from the rest of the house with a pocket door.\u00a0 Plus, what teenaged girl wouldn\u2019t love a walk-in closet bigger than their mommy\u2019s?<\/p>\n

When we decided to do the room sharing, we made a few strategic decisions.\u00a0 First, we got bunk beds.\u00a0 The one we got is a sturdy, heavy-duty wood construction with stairs rather than a ladder. \u00a0What we really like is that they don\u2019t have to be stacked.\u00a0 Currently we have the beds unstacked and the stairs in the corner behind the door so we can use the under stair storage but the girls can\u2019t use it as a launching pad onto the lower bed.\u00a0 We\u2019ll leave it this way for at least another year, probably until Sugarplum starts Kindergarten.\u00a0 At this time we can stack the beds and use the extra space for a desk for each of the girls.<\/p>\n

The other thing we\u2019ve done to ensure safety with the distance is put a baby gate up in the door.\u00a0 This keeps them contained when they should be in bed (we don\u2019t have a problem with wandering children who need water or to go potty).\u00a0 It also provides a sense of safety since they are only a few steps from the door out to the pool which both girls know how to open.\u00a0 If they do need us, the can call or when they are up we easily hear the gate rattling.<\/p>\n

During nap time I do, however, separate the girls (yes, my almost 5 year old still takes a nap, EVERY DAY!). \u00a0Honeybun\u00a0sleeps in the guest room (unless we have guests then she naps in my room).\u00a0 This has worked out perfectly since they don\u2019t usually sleep the same amount of time.\u00a0 Separating them allows each to sleep as long as she needs without disturbing the other or preventing each other from going to sleep.<\/p>\n

At night time we used to have a problem with Sugarplum getting up and trying to play and then both girls not actually going to sleep for over an hour.\u00a0 We tried managing them, forcing them to lay back down, taking things away, etc. until I finally realized it didn\u2019t really matter. They were in their room, they were not bother us and eventually they were falling asleep so we stopped worrying about it and after a few weeks\u00a0 they started going straight to sleep after just a few minutes of chit chat.<\/p>\n

While this is not a set up I would have expected to choose for my family, it is working out for us amazingly well and at this point I don\u2019t know that I would do it differently.<\/p>\n

The girls’ room (clearly still needs some decor help…curtains are my next project, after having baby of course!)<\/p>\n

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About a year ago, we visited Florida from Ireland to look for what would become our new home when we moved back a few weeks later.\u00a0 Over 3 days, hubby and I visited close to 25 houses looking for one that would suit our family just right.\u00a0 I had very strict criteria, the biggest being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2330,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786\/revisions\/2330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}