Two kids, one room
A three bedroom North American style home seems to be hard to find in San Juan del Sur. Both homes we’ve lived in have been two bedroom. There does seem to be plenty of five bedroom homes, but not only is that excessive for our family of four, it is also out of our price range.
With the help of In Nica Now we looked for a three bedroom home to move into initially, but were unable to find one that worked for our family. Having a two bedroom first home ended up not being problem when we first moved here since Titus was still very young and nursing a lot at night. It was convenient to have him in a Pack ‘n Play in our room.
It wasn’t until our second house, and my desire to sleep through the night, that this predicament became apparent. Surely people do this everywhere. While driving past the local’s small shack-like homes, I started feeling guilty that this was such a dilemma for me. I know a lot of Nicaraguans have to all share a bed or sleep in hammocks and I was fussing over how to put two kids in one room in their own beds!
After some bad moods and a few tears arising from lack of sleep, my husband Kharron Googled some modus operandi. We thought the one that made the most sense was to try to get the kids to go to bed at the same time. This would mean Azalea would go to sleep an hour before her usual time and Titus would have to wait an extra 30 minutes for his bedtime. It also meant a race through cooking dinner, eating dinner, bath time, books, & nursing Titus.
The following night we had it all planned out, taking advise from a blog we found “Its time to sleep train the baby” – I would bath both kids and then nurse Titus while Azalea got to play in the tub a little longer. We would both read books so one person could hold Titus, then off to bed for both. We read and followed all the advise about how to prep your toddler for the crying baby in their room and how often to go in and check on both participants.
First night we missed our targeted time of 7pm by 30 minutes. I don’t mean to say that both kids were asleep by 7:30pm, what I mean is that we didn’t even start the adventure until then. It didn’t go well after that. There were many tears and lots of explaining. In the end once the kids were finally asleep it was time for us to go to sleep as well.
Reluctantly we attempted the same process again the next night, but about half way through it we realized that this wasn’t for us. We let Azalea get out of bed and watch a show while I got Titus to sleep. Then once Titus was asleep and it was Azalea’s normal bed time I escorted her to bed explaining that she needed to be quiet. I bribed her with the promise of a donut in the morning if she didn’t wake her brother.
Now we are settled into our two-kids-in-one-room routine and it is going fairly smoothly. We still bath the kids together, but after bath Azalea gets to watch a show on her tablet or sometimes we have a late dinner. At 7:30pm Titus waves goodnight to everyone and gets rocked in the rocking chair and one last nursing session before being put in his Pack ‘n Play bed. Sometimes he gives a couple cries as I shut the door, but he is usually asleep in no time. At around 8pm I read a couple books to Azalea in our bed, then we brush teeth, go potty and she gives goodnight kisses. She now knows that she needs to be very quiet in her room and she hardly ever wakes her brother.
Now I need to figure out how to get only one kid to wake up at a time. Its seems one is always waking the other which makes a zero-to-sixty feel to the start of the day.