Stacking the kiddies like firewood

We’ve been slowly wrapping our heads around the idea of fitting three kids into a three-bedroom townhouse. It seems to make sense for us to move Simon into Tristan’s room, and leave his room with the crib intact for the player to be named later. We’ve talked to the boys, and to my surprise, they are both quite enthusiastic about room-sharing, so now we just have to work out the logistics.

Even though he’s two-and-a-half and nearly 40 lbs, Simon is currently still in his crib. I remember a little too clearly the agony of moving Tristan into a big-boy bed at the tender age of 20 months, and the ensuing weeks of sleep-deprived, eight-months-pregnant hell as he wandered around the upper floor of the house from midnight to three am every day, so I haven’t been in too much of a hurry to transition Simon out of his crib any earlier than absolutely necessary. I think, though, that with Beloved’s semester break in December, coupled with the fact that I’ll have a bit of holiday time and Tristan will be out of school, makes that seem like a reasonable time to give it a try.

We already have a second-hand twin pine bedframe that loosely matches Tristan’s, and so on the weekend we went out to Ikea to scope mattress and dresser options. That’s when we stumbled across this little gem of a bed. (The original version of this post had a picture imbedded - pardon the pun - into the post, but blogger.beta ate that post, and now refuses to let me post a picture. Grrrrrr!)

In the catalogue, it’s sold as a low loft bed (it’s only about 4 feet off the floor), but in the store they had it set up with a second mattress on the floor, setting it up as a particularly child-friendly bunk bed.

The boys LOVED it. We couldn’t pry them out of there. Now, we’ve discussed the idea of bunk beds in passing before, but usually the conversation ends with a snort of derision and the image of one or both boys launching themselves off the top bunk and onto, say, the dog. Clumsy + rowdy boys + bunk beds = TROUBLE. But this particular set-up seems fairly innocuous, and I have to admit that I love the idea of saving the space. And besides, wouldn’t you have absolutely loved a bed like this when you were a kid?

There are a few impracticalities, aside from the prospect of abrasions and contusions. Crawling onto the top bunk to read bedtime stories might become a bit of a trick, especially in the third trimester when I’m likely to not even fit under the canopy. And while Simon was content in theory to sleep in the bottom bunk – Tristan put together a surprisingly reasonable plea for the bed on the spot in Ikea – I’m sure the time would come when they would battle for the top bunk.

What do you think, bloggy friends? I don’t have any room-sharing experience of my own, let alone any bunk bed experience. (Heck, even now I don’t like the idea of sharing a room and would gladly have a room of my own!) Any thoughts or tips on room sharing in general, or bunk beds in particular?

And be assured, I wouldn’t even be considering this if we didn’t live in a country with socialized medicine and free trips to the ER.