Is Madelyn a big girl?

Well, seeing that Madelyn has turned two AND that she has a baby brother that will be taking up residence in the nursery, Madelyn is soon moving into her new bedroom. Hopefully it will be as easy as it sounds (more about that later). However, setting up the room has taken some work and a lot of obsessing by her mother.

So, first, Ben and I had to move out of her room! We had been sleeping in that room ever since we moved in the house a year ago. It was never supposed to be our room even from the beginning but we moved in there to keep the master bedroom free to paint. One year later, the master was still not painted and we were still sleeping in the wrong bedroom....so, after some work (mostly on Ben's part) to paint the ceiling in the master bedroom, we moved in. We still have to paint the walls but that can come later.

Second, we had to paint the walls in Madelyn's new room. We decided to use a spring green on the two outside walls and a beige on the inside walls. I think it looks nice! The beige offsets the green so that it doesn't look too dark and the green gives it some color so it doesn't look too drab. Plus, these are two colors that we already had laying around the house.

Third, I created a diagram to figure out how it should be arranged - okay, so this is where the obsessive mother part comes in! But I did! I created a grid layout of the room and then made grid paper furniture pieces to scale. It helps, really! So once I figured out the room layout, we put the bed and toybox in their places and starting look for area rugs and dressers. The rugs are to cover the not-so-pretty old and torn-up wood floor and to give Madelyn a place to play. We got them cheap at Home Depot. The dresser we picked up at IKEA. It took us almost two hours to assemble, but for the price ($149) it was worth it!

Fourth, Ben's mother (Grandmomma) offered to supply/make the bed linens and the window treatments! I was excited to hear this because now I didn't have to find anything! Grandmomma had found some fabric that was perfect and all I had to do was take measurements and give her a timeframe to be done in! How wonderful! The stuff arrived last Saturday and Madelyn helped unpack the box and to her surprise, there was a little (or big) something extra in there! A doll!! She calls it "daw-ie" and LOVES to drag it around the house! She can't carry it very well seeing that it is a good foot taller than her! She would love to sleep with it, but we are keeping it in the new bedroom so that maybe it will become incentive to sleep in the "big girl bed" when the time comes. Back to the bed linens and window treatments...they have the cutest fairies on them!! Madelyn was attracted to the fabric immediately. So the bed linens were put on right away and Madelyn immediately got up on the bed and started to fake sleep on it - good sign! We decided to wait until Madelyn was asleep to put the window treatments up. Grandmomma had made roman shades and sheers. Solid colored purple satin shades with the fairy fabric as sheers over it. It looks so nice!




I still have some more decorating to do - a lamp for on top of the dresser, maybe some hooks to hang stuff on and a bin to throw stuff in....a picture maybe....I still have that to obsess over. But I think we still have another harder challenge in front of us! We have 7 weeks to get Madelyn settled in her new room....can we do it? It would be nice to have her transferred over soon so that I can concentrate on getting Pipsqueak's room ready for him. I'm hoping that she will be one of those kids that once she understands that her new bed is her new place to sleep, she will take to it quickly. I have heard stories of other kids that once they had the freedom of a "big girl/boy bed" they had trouble staying in bed. Please pray that we don't have to fight that battle!!

NOTE: Last night was our first attempt at the new "big girl bed" and it went much better than expected! Madelyn was VERY excited about laying down in the new bed and holding her dollie and reading books there before sleeping. However, when she realized that this was where she was going to sleep for the night, she wasn't sure what to think. She got out of bed once and I put her back telling her it was bedtime and she had to stay in bed. She didn't leave her bed again but she wasn't ahppy about it either.... But in the end I think it was successful! She took about 20 minutes to fall asleep and she slept there all night! We'll see how tonight goes!