Separate Cribs

It's official! They are their own individuals now! The girls moved into separate cribs. It was a necessity really, after Abigail started rolling, as she liked to roll onto her sister. It wasn't so bad at first because she would only roll but once, but later as she began to roll multiple times, Annabelle was in the path of the steamroller. I worried that Abigail's swaddling blankets would get stuck on Annabelle's head one night while I was asleep.

A good friend of mine, Dana, who happened to have a crib that was not in use, drove her crib up to my house. She and her husband assembled it for us and everything. We decided to order another mattress so that they both were equally as new and so the cribs could be interchangable.

Charles and I debated on the room arrangement for a while. At first, I thought we'd have to move my chair and put the cribs on either side of the window. But we were worried that if the girls were separated too far, they would get lonely and wake up in the middle of the night. Also, when we did arrange it that way, the chair was stuck against a window and every time I sat in it, it would hit the window sill (since it is a rocker). And we looked for another place to have it in the house, but we don't exactly have room for it elsewhere.

But mostly, we live on a busy street. Our house is on a corner of sorts; the street actually takes a little jog to the left. So our house and the house kitty corner to us both have part of our street that Ts into the side of our house. One summer when my sister was visiting, Charles, Guinevere and I were eating dinner in the back yard. Charles went inside to clean up the dishes while Guinevere and I finished a conversation, when suddenly we heard and felt a huge crash. My back was to the sound, but Guinevere was facing the back fence and watched it all unfold: a car crashed into our yard and knocked down two small trees and the back half of our fence. He ended up in the far corner of our yard. In his defense, his brakes actually did go out. But to his detriment
he was also drunk.

The girls' bedroom is in an even more vulnerable spot than our back yard because it intersects with the two streets. This equals double the opportunity for people to come crashing into our house. So we planted a huge non-fruiting pear tree in the corner of our front yard, and when the settlement of the insurance came from the car accident, we built a new fence with posts reinforced in 4-feet of concrete all along our house.
And then one night, we put them to bed in separate cribs. So ultimately we decided that the cribs had to stay away from that exposed wall, and had to stay on the inside wall.

Right now, Annabelle sleeps in the white one and Abigail sleeps in the brown one.

Beyond the safety concerns, I think I agonized over separating them than was necessary. I worried, they would be lonely since they were so used to sleeping with someone. I worried that they would get cold. I worried that I wouldn't be able to see/hear one of them (in the crib further away). I worried that the new crib would be harder to access as I was used to the other one.

So during the day, we let them trade off napping in the new crib. And I let them play in the new crib. They loved putting their hands through the different shaped bars, and looking at the mobile from a different angle.

Ultimately, when the night came to have them sleep in separate cribs, none of these worries came to pass. The change didn't faze the girls one bit. They slept through that whole night. They LOOOVE the new crib and loving having their own separate play areas. And when we do put them together in the same crib to play, it is a special treat.

It just goes to show that babies are resilient and adaptable. As it turns out, it's the adults that are not!