It’s time.  Time for Lydia to move into a big girl bed.  My baby is growing up… *sniff, sniff*… excuse me while I dry my eyes.

Just a week or two before Christmas she started climbing out of her crib.  We’re taking that as a sign.  However, rather than converting the crib to a toddler bed like we did for Alethea, we are going to move her straight into a big bed.  AND, (drumroll please) her new big bed will be in Alethea’s room.

Now, I am aware that in making this move, we are likely to start rumors, so let me just say for the record: I am NOT pregnant!  We felt that having the girls together in one room at night was better for a number or reasons:

1) The furniture in Alethea’s room is all anchored to the wall.  None of the furniture in the nursery is anchored.  I don’t want Lydia running around in the room at night and pulling something down on herself, but also don’t fancy making more holes in our walls than necessary.

2) If at some point down the road we decide to have another child, we will have one less transition to make.

3) If we don’t have any more children, it will be pretty simple to move the girls back apart later, or perhaps they could have one room for sleeping and one room for a homework/play space.

4) It will simplify the nighttime routine if we read two books together instead of two books each, sing one round of songs, say one set of prayers, etc.  Of course we could do this all together and then separate, but at the moment, that’s not what we’re doing and I would LOVE to shorten the process.

5) Plain and simple, the girls WANT to be together.  They are both excited to be in the same room at night, and I’m being so bold as to hope that it will cut down on the number of middle of the night interventions I have to make because of a suspicious shadow or other imagined disturbances.  *Crossing my fingers*

So we knew we wanted to put the girls together, but then we had to decide on the exact arrangement.  Alethea’s room is a nice size, but not so roomy that we wanted two twin beds on the floor, so bunkbeds made sense.  However, we didn’t feel that Alethea was ready for a top bunk yet, so it was decided that we would try to find a set of bunk beds with a trundle, so that we could just set up the bottom bunk and trundle until Alethea is old enough to attain top bunk status.

After much internet searching, we were down to these four options:

Option #1 –
This one from Bunk Bed King had by far the best price, was a nice color and is made of solid pine.  However, we thought it was the least ‘finished’ looking of all the beds, so we might need to add a side panel at the bottom to hide the trundle when not in use and we also didn’t like how the ladder and trundle would get in each other’s way.

Option #2:
We really liked the overall look of this bed from Target.  It was similar to the first bed, but with a little more interest in the trundle front and a side panel already in place to disguise the trundle.  Also the ladder was nicely positioned out of the way of the trundle drawer.  However, the regular retail price was twice that of option #1.

Option #3:
It was love at first sight when I saw this bed at TheBeanBagStore.com.  It’s white (my favorite color) and the detail, oh the lovely diamond DETAIL!  I’ve never seen such a stylish bunk bed before!  However, price was the number one objection, because even on sale, it was over budget by a couple hundred dollars.  Also, I was afraid the white of the bed wouldn’t be the same as the white of the bookcase already in Alethea’s room and it would annoy me if the whites didn’t match (and I’m not sure it would be good for my marriage if I asked Peter to help me haul the bookcase out of the room for repainting).

Option #4:
Okay, so at $22,605 this bed from PoshTots.com was light years outside our budget, and I’m not even sure it would fit through our front door, but the six year old in me just had to pretend for a minute.  And, yes, that is a slide you see there on the right hand side…

Anyone care to guess which bed we ordered?

If you said option #2, you’d be correct.  The price of number one was great, but then the Target bed went on sale and we used my RedCard to get another 5% off plus free shipping, so it brought the price down enough that it really just made sense to get something we liked as is, rather than buy bed #1 and have to do work to make it look how we wanted it to look.

So now there are six giant boxes sitting in our entry waiting for Peter to get home and start assembling.  Lucky guy.

Pictures of the bed and also Lydia’s birthday party will be headed your way soon.  Stay tuned!