- Our Whistle-stop Tour of New York City with Kids Part Two: Where We Stayed and Ate
- Our Whistle-stop Tour of New York City With Kids Part One: Getting There
- Our Family Trip to Berlin
- Packing Essentials for a Family Ski Holiday
- The Big (and Not So Big) Move
- The day Shawn Mendes taught my daughter an amazing life lesson
- 10 Things for kids to do in Costa Adeje, Tenerife
- The Croke Park Stadium Tour
- Tips for making the most of a day out at Tayto Park
- 10 Kids TV characters you will love to hate as a parent
Letting Go
I have come to realise as a mother I need to learn to let go of the baby items (letting go of my kids as they grow is a whole other post!).
I am a sentimental sort. I get emotionally attached to the strangest of things and since becoming a mother a lot of those things are the little baby things. I have gotten rid of some items – usually as a result of them being run into the ground or being broken – but very little of my baby items have left the house – the most I can do is put them in the attic in storage. Of course the fact that after my first I went on to have baby number two and three meant I had a good excuse not to get rid of anything and many items have reappeared from the attic on numerous occassions. I’m not a hoarder (just to clarify), my house is not stacked high in newspapers and packages. In fact there are some moments I am ruthless in getting rid of stuff and I fully intend to de-clutter this house while on my career break.
This weekend, however, we were getting rid of our cot bed. We bought it 7 years ago flat packed, along with a matching changing unit with drawers as we set to turn our box bedroom into a nursery. I was about 7 months pregnant. I can remember it like yesterday. There was a lot of swearing as I watched my husband (and laughed as there was not alot I could do to help!) trying to construct the two items.
Not sure what the rush was getting it set up as our first born didn’t go into it until she was about 5 months old!! She loved it – great sleeper. We never got to turn the cot into the junior bed it was designed to become as my second was on the way and we thought it best to move her to a new room before our baby boy arrived. So at 2 years (and 1 month!) we moved our eldest into a double bed with bed guard and all kitted out in Dora duvet covers and pink walls. She was thrilled. The box room remained a nursery and waited until our son moved into his own room from the crib in ours at about 5 months.
When he turned 2 I was pregnant again but not as far along and having run out of bedroom we decided to turn the cot into a junior bed for him – at least for a few months as we reckoned he wouldn’t need to get out of the room until at least 4-5 months after our third was born which at that point was almost a year away.
Roll on to our baby girl being born and her also spending about 4-5 months in the crib in our room we set to work on rearranging sleep solutions. We got a set of bunk beds in the room with a double bed and (thankfully) having added an attic conversion while pregnant put the double bed up there. We painted the pink walls yellow and added some Peppa Pig stickers and we felt we had a nice gender neutral room and our little man moved in with his big sister and his little sister took over the nursery and the junior bed reverted to cot status.
Now our little lady will be 2 in less than 2 weeks and for the first time I will celebrate a 2nd birthday of one of my children without a new baby on the way! We had started talking about when we would move her to a bed – would we convert the cot back to a junior bed? Would we buy a single bed? Or why not another set of bunks so that there is a spare for any future sleep overs?
Well the discussion got quickly fast forwarded when our little lady, while having a little jump around at nap time about 2 weeks ago broke the base of the cot. It was not really repairable – not beyond a few days of holding it up – and we needed a solution fast. Almost the same day, I was picking my daughter up from a party and one of the other mums I know relatively well asked if I wouldn’t happen to be looking for a Princess bed as she had one she was going to get rid of and it was mine if I needed it.
So yesterday my husband dismantled the cot. It is gone. The bed that housed my three little babies. It sounds so ridiculous to say I feel a bit sad about seeing it go. End of an era. But a new Princess bed was constructed and we are hopeful this new bed will serve our little lady well (and with any luck help her sleep in her own bed all night without visiting us!!)
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