Naomi and Mikaela: Naomi's new room and big girl bed.

With the new addition joining our family in January, we decided we wanted to have Naomi out of her crib and into her new big girl room well in advance of January so we wouldn't have to worry about any transitional issues or jealousy issues once baby 2 took over the nursery and crib.
We finished our basement this summer, so we were able to move our office from one of the guest rooms down to the basement, freeing up an extra bedroom. This extra bedroom became Naomi's new room. We painted it grey, and made a huge accent wall out of chalkboard and magnetic paint. We furnished it with white furniture from Ikea and West Elm, and Austin painted a huge canvas cartoon painting of Naomi. We basically did everything we could to make the room fun and exciting so Naomi would WANT to go in there. It took no time at all for Naomi to embrace her new room. She excitedly showed "Naomi's NEW ROOM" to all of our visitors, and loved playing in there. It took a little longer for her to stop referring to the nursery as Naomi's old room. And now she calls the nursery "baby 2's room". She's been sleeping in her big girl bed since we returned home from Nantucket in September. We actually started her in a bed while we were on vacation to ease the transition. That worked really well for us.
If you ask her if she wants to sleep in her crib, she;ll laugh and say, "noooo cribs are for babies". We're still working on getting her to fall asleep on her own again now that she's in her big new room, but she's finally sleeping through the night again (knock on wood) and we're through the hardest part hopefully.
We had to put bed rails on 3 sides of her bed since Naomi is possibly the squirmiest child alive (supposedly she gets this from me, I find this hard to believe). She can still get in and out of the bed on her own, but thankfully so far, once she's in bed, she prefers to call for Mommy and Daddy as opposed to getting up in the middle of the night and wandering around. Not to say the transition was easy. We had several nights of late night wakings where Naomi would be screaming at the top of her lungs, "DADDY I NEED YOU!!!!" or "MOMMY WHERE ARE YOU!!!?" And my personal favorite, "HEY EVERYBODY!!!! EVERYBODY WHERE AREEEEEEEE YOU!???!!!" Of course now that we're sleeping through the night again, I can SORT of look back and laugh at those nights. But somehow it makes me think of January with even more trepidation....how on earth are we going to get through nights where a baby is going to need to be fed every 1.5 hours!? yikes. what were we thinking....
Anyway here are some pics of Naomi's new room, and a couple from the transitional period while we were on vacation in Nantucket. We're not completely done with the room, we dont really have any decor up yet, but we'll get there...maybe when she's a teenager.