the family browne.: big girl room.

we moved emme in to her big girl room some time around labor day. but, it's really only now that i can call her room almost finished. sigh. projects take a long time around these parts. i've been way too exhausted in the evenings to get much done these days, and the weekends are like a whirlwind.

in any case, her room was live-able, just not done. and now, i think it's fairly close to both. probably 94%. which is about as much as we complete anything, sadly.

i was torn on the issue of moving emme to a real bed so early - over 2 months before her second birthday. but, she had slept on pallets on the floor at my parents, and in a real bed while we vacationed in vermont, not to mention the nap mat at school, so i figured she could handle it. i also wanted to give her plenty of buffer before small smalls was born so she didn't associate him/her with being kicked out of her crib. finally, the room we moved her in to is right next to the kids' bathroom and i was hopeful that would be a help for potty training.

so. it was a slow process. we started talking to her about the room, telling her what things we would put in there, etc. i picked out fabric for her quilt, which i hoped would be the base of her loose color scheme. i'm not a theme person, nor am i one to adhere super-strictly to a pallet of any sort, but i knew there needed to be something somewhat cohesive with the room, so i hope i achieved that. we painted. we dragged in some furniture and bought a couple of other items at target and ikea. we debated whether to just leave the mattress on the floor - the montessori method recommends that - but ultimately, we thought it really needed to feel like its own space within the room, so we got a low frame from ikea.

the other stuff i wanted to do with the room were things like keeping it super minimal (montessori style), etc. well, that didn't exactly work. all of ek's toys were in our living room (the one that has no furniture in it) before, so it was more important to get all that stuff out of the common area than it was to keep her room sparse and monk-like. it worked out. i do need to work on de-cluttering some of the stuff that's no longer age appropriate, but for now, i think she's pretty ok with having all her goods at her finger tips. she's also more than happy to drag it all throughout the house and leave quite the wake. let's just say i sing the restore song a lot.

and, that's it, i guess. the pictures are all from today on my iphone. her bed is not usually made (i wish i could lie and say it was), mainly because i can't deal with the belly and the reaching into the far corner, and emme is not big/skilled enough to make her own bed, and justin doesn't care about made beds at all. but everything else is mostly as it usually is. emme has done amazingly well with her big girl room. it took 2 or 3 nights to adjust to the new sleeping sitch, but since then she has loved every second of it. she still calls us to come get her in the morning/after nap instead of getting out of bed, which i love. she's potty trained except for nights, and it's great having her bathroom right there.

please excuse the blown-out christmas tree and table lamp, and the darkness of the photos. i'm doing the best i can....