Emma’s Room
I’ve been dragging my feet in posting about this (I didn’t want to jinx things!!) – but Emma moved into her own bedroom on 30 December 2013, and has slept there, quite well, ever since.
The long story is that she was slowly but surely killing me by repeatedly waking up at night, and yes, her crib was in our bedroom.
By the end of November, things were getting a bit better, but the midnight feeding kept moving all over the place, sometimes all the way until 2 am. That’s when the chorus of women around me started chanting ‘drop the midnight feeding’, and I figured… why not?
On 01 December, Finnur flew off to the USA, and I decided to stop sleeping in my own bed. Instead, I moved full time to the single bed in the door-less ‘office’, i.e. the fourth (bed)room on the second floor.
And lo and behold, Emma stopped waking up at night!! (I also kept going to bed very late so I didn’t wake up to every whimper and complaint, so that ‘helped’).
When Finnur returned some two weeks later, I kept on sleeping in the office, except for a few nights where I tried sleeping in my own bed. The conclusion was always the same: Emma slept worse with me in the room (of course, she could care less about Finnur!).
What needed to happen was clear: Emma had to move into the ‘office’, except it had no door.
After some prompting and prodding from Guðrún, I called around to see what a door might cost. Of course the door-opening is non-standard (almost two doors wide, but not quite), so we were looking at either a) a very expensive custom-made double door, or b) a cheaper single door with a wooden panel on the side, either as a DYI project, or employing a carpenter.
Being female, I decided to go for option c) (that’s a joke for Augusto 🙂 ) and hang thick curtains to cover the opening and call it a day! (10 images total)
It struck me one day that we still had a set of thick-ish Ikea curtains on a semi-permanent loan from Holla. We’d originally used them to cover our bedroom window in our rental apartment during our first year back in Iceland. Amazingly, I managed to finish hemming them the day after we put them up. I guess I’ve learnt my lesson after too many hemming projects that I let linger half-finished for years…
Luckily, Holla hadn’t asked for the curtains back, and the color looked pleasant against the wooden frames. (I found out later the she also used to use these curtains as ‘doors’.)
The only thing we needed to buy were a curtain rod and holders, which we got at Ikea. The bed pushes up against the curtains, so no light shines through. We also figured out (after a trip to the store) that the radiator temperature adjuster that is next to the bed is child-proofable.
Lucky for us, Ikea has recently changed their curtain rod holders so that you can now fit them snugly against the wall – which was just what we needed!
We also installed a curtain rod over the balcony door, and moved the dark curtains from our bedroom over for added daytime darkness.
The bed I routinely slept in became a very comfortable nursing station, complete with warm duvet.
The ‘only’ remaining problem are all the things in the lower bookshelves, which we need to move elsewhere. And yes, we also need to clear that pesky pile of random stuff that’s piled up on top of it. Ugh.
To accommodate some of the stuff that needs to move, we bought yet another Hemnes Ikea cabinet, which happened to be on sale!
Of course, Emma figured out very quickly that she could yank on the curtain to make a hole to peek through. Sometimes she’ll stand there and complain loudly before going to sleep in the evenings, and that’s where she goes when she wakes up and starts calling for mamma, mamma! (Yes, I always fix the curtain before putting her to bed, but it’s pretty pointless really.)
Ms. Adooorable!
Besides needing to clear out the shelves in the room, so Emma can start roaming there without too much damage, we need to install black-out curtains.
This week I therefore ordered black-out curtains for both the small window above the bed, as well as the balcony door. Later on I’m going to have to add some backing to the door-way curtains because they won’t be thick enough when the midnight sun rolls around.
All in all though, we’re pretty happy with how this has turned out! Of course there are still nights when she wakes up at odd hours, but not consistently so.
Now if we could only convince her (and Bjarki!) to sleep longer than to 6 am…!! 🙂