SUBURBAN * POP

Hey everybody! I willingly skipped Modernism Week (!) for a relaxing weekend in Santa Cruz with my guy and a good concert instead. I have conflicting loyalties and the songs won out this time. Thanks Grandparents for the break!! We were wondering what other people do on their weekends away because we usually take in a band or two (hello Brian Fallon!), shop foreign craigslists (such a bust this time), play the “could you live here?” game (why you so weird Santa Cruz?), and hunt down good burritos (such a score…I shamelessly ate burritos twice. In the same night. From the same place. Hours apart. Ordered from the same cashier. Wearing the same outfit. Nailing life.)

I was so happy to sleep all night. It’s been a while. We’ve been dealing with some major sleep issues at home for the past few months. So bad that, on a whim, the guest room was demolished last week as we split our kids into their own rooms for the first time in their lives. To summarize, the split bedrooms suck so far. I’ll get into it at the end of this post if you care. To add to the stress, the house is in such disorder from the room swap fallout. But I snapped a few photos of the guest room minutes before things were torn apart. Not one thing has changed since last time, bare bulb and all, but our days of a guestroom are over so I thought it needed a proper send off. Nothing like the feeling of an unfinished project to end things on!

So now this is a kid room and we’ll never see the likes of this again in this house. I always knew that one day it would be obvious that it was time for separate rooms, and that day was last Wednesday. I’m really sad about it and it’s not my preference. I think western culture places so much emphasis on sleeping alone early on, but it’s not necessary or beneficial – or how I want to parent. Our move was out of necessity. We’ve been dealing with a lot of night time anxiety and one child has constantly been waking the other up so that both were up for hours at a time, a problem we haven’t really had until last month. It was bad. I’ve been a zombie incapable of functioning in society. I’ve been grumpy and mean. With the amount of sleep I’ve been getting, I could have been raising a newborn. But there’s no newborn, only my oldborns who can’t get it together and me who is falling apart. It seemed silly to continue on this way when we had an unused room right there that may alleviate some of the strain.

Almost instantly I regretted it. It’s only been a week so time will tell if this was the right move, but here’s my rundown so far on the separate rooms. My kids have never been the greatest sleepers anyway, as if you couldn’t tell. I’m kind of embarrassed to say how old they are, but then also not because I know we aren’t the only household with 5 and 8 years olds who experience night time troubles. Parents of “bad” sleepers, unite (hang in there and if you are dealing with night time anxiety, this article was really informative/confirmed a lot of my parenting beliefs that parents of “good” sleepers like to blame on bad sleeping)!

Con: General milestone sadness for this mama. I guess my babies aren’t babies anymore and I’m sad about how fast it goes.

Pro: Less waking each other up

Pro: One who never sleeps through the night, slept through the night when there wasn’t a sibling to wake them up. (Very short lived…now he’s sick again and up all night)

Con: But the other one has had more waking ups from the extra scariness of being alone in a room

Con: Getting them into bed is much more difficult separate

Pro: They can have different light settings, which was a previous battle

Con: The guest room turned kid room isn’t as isolated as the other bedroom so kitchen/family room noises now wake one up

Con: The kids are more territorial/possessive now that they have their own space and toys are getting divvied out

Con: Several times they both have been wanting a parent in their room and there is usually only one of us (I try to let our “working” parent sleep on weeknights) but now two rooms.

Con: Two rooms need immediate unplanned furniture/decorating/organizing/etc

Pro: There are two new rooms to decorate, which is so fun apart from a timetable

So, that’s where I’m at. Tired and unexpectedly trying to pull together 2 rooms that didn’t even exist on my to-do list last week. Wishing everyone happy house projects until next time!