Big Girl Bed

We decided to move Emmerich to a big girl bed and give Miss Porter the crib when she arrives. I wanted to do this way in advance of P's arrival so that Em had plenty of time to adjust without feeling like she was getting the boot.  

After many an hour browsing on pinterest I finally got some ideas for what I wanted for Em's new bed. We are going to try and have the girls share a room as soon as Porter is sleeping through the night (hopefully that will happen sooner than Em's 7 months). That way we will have a guest bedroom for visitors. 

Here are some of my inspiration rooms (think overall look, not colors). 

I knew I wanted upholstered headboards and I just couldn't justify spending the money I was seeing online so I recruited Paul to help build them. I think he was excited to have a project to work on. 

First we watched a ton of you tube tutorials - never found a really great all encompassing one so unfortunately I don't have one to share. 

We started by purchasing the twin bed and a sheet of plywood. Paul measured everything off and we cut the plywood in half to determine the height. I drew half of a curve template and we used that to make sure that the curve was even on both sides. A little handy work with the jigsaw and low and behold we had the headboard. Then Paul build the frame so that we could screw the bed frame to the headboard. (FYI this was the tricky part as we couldn't find many tutorials on this; most people just attach the headboard to the wall, but we wanted ours mobile).

 Clearly Emmerich was very excited about this process (and I think making her a part of it helped in the transition)

Next came the upholstery. FYI foam is expensive. I lucked out and found 2" foam for half price at Joann's fabric and it was still half of the total cost of the project. We laid the head board on the foam and traced it then cut it out. 

 Next came the batting. Pneumatic staple gun helps here.

 Then comes the fabric. I have to note that I got All of the fabric for $15.  Love sales! I chose a cotton blend.  It has a little stretch which was helpful and is the perfect color of pink. Just so you know it took me about 4 trips to different stores to find this, and I almost gave up, but I finally found her in the bottom of a clearance bin.

I got the rest of the bedding from pottery barn kids. On sale but still slightly ridiculous but I do love it.
We gave the big girl bed a go upon returning from our 10 day stay in San Antonio, and Emmerich being the fabulous and wonderful child that she is did an excellent job on the first try. So far night time has been a breeze. Nap time went great for a couple of weeks then we hit a snag around her birthday. I think she got a little overtired with all of the excitement going on and didn't want to sleep. We had a few days where she crawled out and played instead of napped.
Thankfully I have Dr. Weisbluth's book, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child  which I highly recommend.  I think it is the reason Em is such a good sleeper; although it does make us pretty confined to the house for an early bedtime. I will for sure be using it again to help Porter get quality sleep. I know not everyone feels this way, but I'd rather be tied to a nap schedule and early bedtime than have a kid still waking up in the middle of the night or cranky all the time. Although I do admit, I think Em is just an all around easy kid, and that's probably part of it too.
After rereading part of the book again, I have a strategy to get her naps back on track (Mostly it involves removing all of the toys from her room,  a really early bed time to catch up on sleep, and some bribery if she takes a nap). It worked for today even with some guys power washing and screaming at each other in Spanish outside her window, so hopefully we are back on track for napping. Love that girl, even when she's not napping :)