The Bedroom Dilemma

After a long, hot day, you two retire to that small room with that big bed. That waiting cloud, puffy with pillows. You slip out of your clothes, fold them carefully and put them away. You grab your favorite pair of pajamas and step in. You are brushing your teeth in the bathroom when you feel it. A familiar hand on your waist. A playful finger tucks into the waistband of your pajama bottoms. Pleasantly startled, you turn. Drop your toothbrush. Your head throbs with details and doubts from your day, aches with the sharp stuff of reality, but still you smile...

Hold up. As much fun as it might be, this blog is not the place for quasi-erotic domestic snippets. Sorry. The title of this post is not entirely deceiving though. I do have a bedroom dilemma. But it concerns my daughters. Not so racy, I know.

Again, sorry.

In less than three weeks, after more than three years of dreaming and planning and work, we are moving into our new home. Once upon a time, I documented the progress of this home on this blog under the clever title Happy Headache. It was fun to trace the progress of our renovation here, but then I stopped. Not sure why. Anyway, we are moving. Soon. And in our new place, the girls will each have a wonderful room.

Toddler's is purple.

Baby's is blue.

But.

As many of you know, we just returned from an extended vacation and during said vacation - to the woods, the farm, and the beach - the girls shared a room the whole time. Husband and I were a bit worried about this arrangement because our kids have different sleep schedules. But we rolled with it. And you know what? Everything went well. Better than well. The girls loved being in the same room. Every morning and evening, Husband and I listened to their conversations, precocious and precious, on a sound monitor. Over the course of the two-plus weeks, Toddler taught Baby how to sing her ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle, and Itsy Bitsy Spider. Post-vacation Baby is far more verbal than pre-vacation Baby. And the girls? More so than ever, they are best buds.

Now. Now we are home and the girls are back in their own rooms. They don't appear overly sad about this. They are indeed adaptable little critters. But I'm a bit sad about this. Because there are no longer those amazing conversations to spy on at the opening and close of the day. There are no longer the impromptu music lessons. Or the quiet discipline. (At a certain point every night, Toddler would say firmly to her signing sister, "It's bedtime now. No more books. No more songs. No more Mommy and Daddy.") The tight togetherness, surprisingly harmonious, was temporary. We are now back to our world of sisterly separation.

And so. I find myself in the thicket of another parenting dilemma. Yes, we have designed two separate rooms for our two girls in the new place, but should we use them or should we put our little creatures in the same room? It is worth noting that Husband and I are leaning toward having a third child at some point, so the girls will likely share sometime in the relatively near future anyway.

This might not seem like a big deal to you. Or a genuine dilemma. But it is to me. Because I grew up sharing a room with all of my sisters. We all bunked in a giant green dorm of sorts and I slept on a top bunk. It was absolute chaos, but I loved it. There was never a lack of laughter or drama or friendship in that room. And this was such an important aspect of my childhood that I actually wrote my college essay about it.

So. This question matters to me. And I have a mere eighteen days to decide what to do. And so I'm asking you to weigh in here. Because you all have experiences. As kids who shared rooms or didn't. As parents whose kids share rooms or don't.

(Help. Pretty please.)

What do you guys think? Give the girls their own space or let them bunk together?

If you like my writing or me (or the wallpaper in my kids' rooms) or you simply want to make me smile big, please buy my book (which is considerably more spicy than this post)!