We are in the process of purchasing our first home (inspection is tomorrow!) and we are gaining a significant amount of space and a second story. The house has a downstairs master with the remaining bedrooms upstairs. Our 2.5 year old sleeps through the night in a big girl bed, but she does occasionally have bad dreams or a random early wake up where she will come into our room. I guess I'm just worried about such a big change for her with us being across the house and a staircase away if she wakes up. We are planning to baby gate the stairs, and have another LO on the way due in April, so there are a lot of big changes coming DDs way and id like to make everything as smooth as possible.
Any advice on handling the transition?
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@MrsRoo: having the rooms on separate floors is tough. I think the most important thing is making sure she is comfortable going up and down the stairs and you are comfortable with how she manages them. I don't think at 2.5 that I would have felt comfortable with my lo navigating the stairs alone at night. Maybe you tell her that the gate is there to protect her but if she needs you in the middle of the night, she can yell for you?
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Honestly, I would probably consider sleeping upstairs for awhile if possible.
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We also moved to a new house with stairs when LO was 2.5. We didn't put up gates, just taught him that it's important to hold the railing. He's fairly cautious so we trusted him. We also slept in the guest room upstairs for the first four months or so. Now, at 3.25, we just keep an overhead light on in case he comes downstairs. He still will often just stand at the top of the stairs and wait for us to get him if it's in the middle of the night.
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@mediagirl: @ElbieKay: @hummusgirl: thank you for your input!
There's actually a slightly smaller upstairs master that we are planning to use as our guest room, we could definitely start by sleeping up there to ease the transition. Do you think that would just put us in this same situation when/if we eventually move downstairs? Or once dd gets used to being in the house it would probably be an easier transition?
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@MrsRoo: Our townhouse is the same. We actually made the downstairs master the playroom and use the two upstairs bedrooms.
I think that is the way to go!/ at least start.
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@MrsRoo: That's exactly what we did and it worked out great. There have been a lot of transitions since we moved into this house (potty training, crib to toddler bed and finally us moving from upstairs to the master downstairs). We just told him from the beginning that we were moving into a big house (we'd previously been in small apartments) and we would sleep upstairs with him for a while, and then move downstairs. He took it great. We alternated upstairs and down for a while (just didn't really have our act together!).
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@hummusgirl: that's great to hear, we definitely want to end up in the downstairs master long term, so I'm glad that starting upstairs and planning to transition won't necessarily mean we get stuck upstairs forever!
@Greentea: if our upstairs master had the same set up as the downstairs, I'd do this in a heart beat. But sadly, the downstairs master is way better! So I guess we will just have to deal at first and then move rooms when everyone gets more settled.
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