Cooper's Big Boy Room

The same week that LL turned two years old, we switched her to a big girl room.  She had started jumping out of her crib and we were having a ton of nighttime issues, so we hoped that changing her room over would help all of that out.  Long story short - it did help some and it didn't help some.  

Cooper has always been an amazing sleeper.  When he was born, we really thought about how things went with LL sleep wise (she has never been a good sleeper - still isn't), and I worked so hard with Cooper on his sleeping.  He has always gone to sleep in his room, put down awake, completely in the dark, with the door shut. And he's always done amazing.  

Because he has always been such a good sleeper, and because he is my baby, I was in no rush to transition him to a big boy bed.  In fact, my plan was to wait and move him as close to 3 years old as possible.  We never did a toddler bed with LL - she just went straight from crib to a full sized bed.  In fact, Cooper's crib didn't even have the ability to transition to a toddler bed - it was an old school drop-side crib.  

We went to a birthday party at the beginning of November.  Before we went, we went to Gigi's house for nap time.  We had to wake Cooper up early for the party, and we knew he would get more of a nap over there since it was closer to the party location.  During nap time, Matt stayed at mom's with Cooper and mom, LL and I went to a jewelry party at Grammy's house.  While we were at the party, Matt called me to tell me that Cooper had climbed out of the crib at Gigi's and would not go back to sleep.  He wouldn't stay in the crib, and he wouldn't sleep anywhere else.  This was the start of a long, terrible process.  We went from zero sleep issues to what felt like a million sleep issues.  Now all of a sudden at home, he cried and cried at home when it was bed time and he demanded that we leave the door open at bed time (something we have NEVER done!)  If we tried to shut it, he would scream and was seriously terrified.  If we left it open and shut it after he went to sleep, he would scream in the middle of the night if he woke up and saw it shut.  It was miserable for all of us!  

We ended up lowering the side of his crib as far as it would go (I mean, if he's going to climb out anyway, we might as well make it a shorter drop to the ground), and he seemed to be satisfied with his bed again.  Matt and I made a trip to local furniture stores and found a bed and dresser that we absolutely loved.  They didn't have it in stock, so they had to order it and it ended up taking almost three weeks to come in!  The day that it came in, I took the day off of work to stay home and get his room completely transitioned over.  If you would like to see a "before" of his nursery, you can look back at it here.

Last night in his crib!!  He's so big, he was even able to climb in on his own by now.  You know he was ready for a big bed!

LL rode to school with Kayla, and Matt helped me get all of the furniture out of Cooper's room before he took Cooper to Grammy's and headed off to work.  Gigi came over to help me get Cooper's room all transitioned over.

Cooper had fun playing in all of the empty furniture.

A (mostly) empty room!

The delivery guys got there and literally had everything in and put together in like 20 minutes.  We got Cooper a full sized bed and a dresser.  The neat thing about his bed is that the mattress runs left to right (more like a day bed) instead of front to back.  This makes for a lot more space in his room!  His bed also had storage drawers underneath that are huge and fantastic.  We also got a new mattress, but ended up putting it in LL's room.  We figured we had already potty trained one kid on that mattress (we had previously dubbed it the "peepee mattress", we might as well potty train the next one on it too.  That way only one mattress is gross and we can throw it out and give Cooper a new one when he's all done potty training.  Since LL doesn't have any accidents any more, it made sense for her to get the new one.

Gigi and I played around with the location of the furniture, and we ended up moving the bed to a different wall than where his crib was.

Here's a look at the finished product!!

We ended up splitting his two storage cubes apart (they used to be right beside each other) and storing some bigger books and toys in-between them.

While we're not going huge on a theme, we are doing a "cars" theme in his room.  Not the movie Cars, but actual cars.  We have some road signs and things that still need to be hung up.

First night in his big boy bed!!  It took forever for him to go to sleep (and about a million times in and out of bed - a big no-no for us), but he finally went out.

Small boy in a big bed!

He's been in his big boy bed for about a month now, and things are going much better.  It's still not perfect and we're still dealing with some issues (mainly dealing with him getting in and out of bed), but it is slowly getting better.  And I absolutely love his new room.  We all do.  And we all end up playing in there a lot.  We're still finishing up some decorating in there, but that is almost done, too. How is my last baby out of the crib already??