The Great Bed Swap of 2013

All four of my children have used the same crib. Sam started sleeping in it when he was four months old, and continued until we moved to Philly when Lucy was born. She was the first to have an actual nursery with decor and paint colors to match, seen here. She stayed in there for a long while, until we moved her out to get ready for Maggie. Maggie slept in there until a few months after Fred was born, and there he's stayed. Until now.

On Friday morning I was getting the girls dressed for the day, when all of a sudden their doorway was filled with Freddie. 'I wake up!' he exclaimed. Then he said, 'I hurt my belly!' and sure enough, his little tummy was all red from where he had hoisted himself (headfirst, I might add) over the crib rail. First I made sure he was ok, and then I sent SOB a text to inform him that we would be bed shopping that very night. Interestingly enough, later in the day when it was nap time, he got up to his room a few steps ahead of me, and somehow managed to climb back into the crib as well. I was flummoxed, and so I removed him to the floor and asked him to show me how he had gotten into his bed. He could not/would not show me. I'm pretty convinced that a ghost lifted him in there.

So that evening we took them to Ikea, the bastion of cheap, impulsive furniture buying, and tried to pick out a new bed for him. But we couldn't really find one we liked. We had planned on buying the same bed we had for the girls, because all of the other furniture already matched it, but they don't sell it anymore. So then we started thinking, maybe we ought to get the girls new beds and let Freddie have one of theirs. I've been thinking that bunk beds might work well in their room, because of its dimensions. It's long and narrow, so to maximize space I thought bunk beds along the long wall would work well. SOB didn't like most of them because they were too high. You see, my girls have the habit of jumping around like monkeys, so we decided on this one where the bottom bunk is actually on the floor.

Now they have so much more room to play in there, and they seem to enjoy the sleeping, too. Twice now Lucy has pushed Maggie off of the ladder as she attempted to climb to the top bunk, but we're working on that.

So then there's this: 

The sleeping is only going so-so, but he loves it. Me? I get a little weepy every time I walk in there. We disassembled the crib, and I totally reorganized our tiny attic so that we could store it up there. I'm never getting rid of that crib until I have a grand baby who needs a place to lay their sleepy head. That's reasonable, right?