We're Even: September 2013

In one of my more recent posts you learned that moving Parker and Reagan into their toddler beds was somewhat of a necessary nightmare.

Now that we are about two full months into this toddler-dom, we feel like we might be getting the hang of this chaos we call life with toddlers. Their schedule has been fully overhauled: staying up late and messing around in their beds causes weird morning wake-up times, which causes longer naps during the day (on the days they give it up for naps), which causes later nights, which starts the cycle all over. So, I guess we are calling this our "new norm." When people ask me what time they go to bed or how long they nap, I just laugh. WHO. KNOWS. Every day is different, and for someone who likes consistency with a sleep schedule, I have thrown my hands up many times and said, "Ok, you win today -- let's just survive together until daddy gets home."

For a few weeks their room looked like a little yellow-walled prison cell. They had a minimal amount of furniture possible in there so they could not climb on or jump off of things. Their walls were bare because they would stand on things to take the wall hangings off. Yes, caged monkeys come to mind. We turned their bedroom door doorknob around so the lock was on the outside, and we used the handy dandy little plastic childproof handles on their closet door to avoid any additional "cleaning out your closet" days.

The curtains were removed from their room weeks before the transition to their toddler beds because they ripped them out of the walls - not once, but 3-4 times. So now the drywall won't even support curtain rods. Awesome.

I am working on a valance type-thing that will hopefully be lightweight enough to remain hanging and will be short enough that their little hands won't be able to reach them.

We also discovered their dresser knobs on the floors every now and then, and watched them unscrew them one day on the monitor. So, small brown knobs and exposed wood screws are obviously not safe, so we have left those knobs off and hidden the screws. Classy, right?

Anyways, the novelty of their freedom finally started to wear off enough that we could deem them as having "good behavior" (that's what it's called in prison, right?), so we hung some things up on the walls and started putting baskets and other fun stuff back in their room.

Since the taking-down-of-the-cribs occasion, I have been dying to re-decorate their room. Salivating. But, I had to wait long enough to make sure their room would remain standing.

If you recall, their 2nd birthday party was circus-themed, and we had a lot of left over decorations that were just sitting in boxes. What better toddler room theme for rambunctious two-year-old boy/girl twins than CIRCUS?! Moms: I highly recommend planning ahead and making your kids 2nd birthday party themed in a way that you can use the same stuff if/when you revamp your nursery into a toddler room. Saves money and decoration frustration.

Anyways, here is what we came up with: