A New Room

Ever since the kids learned how to climb out of their cribs, Henry has been terrorizing his sisters.  Mostly it’s because he doesn’t need as much sleep as Piper and Rosemary and wakes up looking for something to do.  Clearly, the best solution was to move Henry to his own room, but this is the kid who didn’t like being in any room by himself and we didn’t think he could handle it.

With all of the cleaning out that we’ve been doing this year, a big goal was to get the guest room ready to become Henry’s room when it was needed.  At some point over the last month or so, it became apparent that Henry might be ready for his own room.  We didn’t want to spend a lot of money on it, but we did want Henry to be able to choose something for his new room.  Gary and I narrowed down a selection of bedding to two sets – a cowboy set and a nautical set.  Then we sat Henry down one night and showed him both sets on the computer and let him choose.  He didn’t hesitate. 

We ordered the comforter set and continued cleaning out and straightening everything to make sure that Henry would have plenty of room.  This past weekend, we set up his new room.

Probably in part because we’ve been talking it up for a while, Henry was so excited about his new room and new bed.  When he woke up from nap yesterday, everything was set up and we let him see his room for the first time.  He was giddy.  Totally excited.  For the rest of the day he kept telling us how tired he was and how he wanted to go to bed.  Finally, it was bedtime, and Henry was able to go to bed (and insisted on sleeping ON the pillow shams instead of the bed pillows).

Henry did so well.  We checked on him a few times, but he never called out to us for anything.  He went to sleep, and managed not to fall out of the bed last night (as far as we know).  This morning we could barely get him to go downstairs to eat breakfast.  He just wanted to stay in his room.

This morning we explained to Henry the importance of taking care of his room and bed, and taught him how to make up his bed.  He really paid attention well, but we figured we’d be going over this for a while before he got it.  Not so.  After nap today, when Henry called out to Miss Sally that he was done with his nap, Miss Sally went up there to find his room cleaned up and his bed made up – quite well.  I’m so proud of our little buddy, and I’m so glad that he’s proud of his new room!