Oh, hallelujah, the angels are singing and I’ve finally got my bedroom to myself again….well, with my husband, of course. At nearly 16 months old, Chris is finally sleeping in the same room as his big brother Mike. For the past eight days. This is epic to me.

I am finally able to read at night with a light! I am now able to watch TV before going to sleep! I can now move around my room without navigating around a playpen and a changing table. THE FREEDOM. It’s all so intoxicating.

It was time, I gotta tell you. On Chris’ side, he’d been getting up about an hour to 45 minutes before my alarm was set to go off, and I’d gotten to a point where I had a routine to preoccupy him so I could get a precious few more minutes of sleep. First, I’d hand him a book. Then a toy. Then I’d turn the TV on to the Disney channel. If all else failed, I’d hand over my iPhone, so he could play with some of the toddler games I’d downloaded for Mike.

On Mike’s side, he’d begun waking up in the middle of the night, asking to “sleep with Mama.” He’d sleep in between us for a couple of hours before waking up and telling his dad he could bring him back to his room.

We’d had the futon in Mike’s room ready to go for a couple of weeks, to get Mike used to the idea that it was his bed. We’d bought cool new spaceship sheets for the futon a long time ago, so Mike was soon calling it his bed.

Finally, last weekend, Trinity said we should just bite the bullet and put both of them in the same room, cold turkey. And it worked. It worked! And actually, they seem to be sleeping better — Mike hasn’t woken up since, asking to sleep in our bed. Maybe he just needed to feel like someone else was in the room with him, or maybe he was beginning to get jealous that we were all sharing the same room (when we were the ones jealous of Mike having the only private room in the house!)

Anyway, this was my experience with moving two kids into the same room. It seems every parent’s method is different.