Amelia's New Room

Sweet Amelia has been sleeping in a corner of my room since birth. She has done very well - as long as she can't see anyone. As she got older I put a red blanket over the rails so she wouldn't know if anyone was in the room. This helped her sleep happily through the night.

A couple of months ago Amelia began to get wise. She discovered that she could move this "red thing" and see people on the other side. She began to wake up at night and peek out at me. Once she was starting to pull herself up she would pull the whole blanket down. At night she would wake up, remove the blanket and cry at me until I woke up and picked her up. This began to happen multiple times a night. Even when the room was completely dark - she still knew that I was only a few feet away. (See unhappy baby photo below.)



Now, I knew my baby. I knew that if she couldn't see me she would go back to sleep, happily, all by herself. It was time she got her own room. The problem was that with six kids in the house, there were no empty rooms to be had.

It became so bad we couldn't even sleep in our room anymore. I was tense thinking that every time one of us coughed or made ANY noise she would wake up. Our room had become totally off-limits during Amelia's naps and bedtime. After about a week of Allen sleeping on the downstairs couch and me sleeping on the upstairs couch I knew something had to change - quick.

Then inspiration struck. Allen and I have a rather large walk-in closet. If we were to rearrange it (and seriously clean out the junk) there would be enough room for a crib against one wall.

I went to work the next day. Now Amelia has her own "room". Amelia is happy, Allen is happy, and I am happy - and we are all sleeping through the night again. (See happy baby photo below.)