Room Assignments

I love this girl room, big enough for 3.

It's funny, but one of the many things strangers ask me when they find out that I have 10 children is "how many bedrooms do you have in your house?"  Then many times they want to know if everyone HAS to share a bedroom.  Gasp......how could a child be asked to share a bedroom in this day and age, especially in America!!!  Well, yes, most of my children do share a bedroom with a sibling and I actually think it's good for them.  I loved sharing a room with my sister who was 7 years older than me.  I think if we had not shared a room then we wouldn't have been nearly as close, especially given the age difference.  I don't even remember either of us ever complaining about it.  I do make sure that my children have time and space to themselves, even if they are sharing a room.  So, to answer the question many have asked, our house officially has 5 bedrooms.  We also turned the study into a bedroom and at one point we had the bonus room a bedroom too.  So for a while we had 7 bedrooms, but now we currently only have 6 : )
So here is the current line-up........
Master Bedroom
Downstairs bedroom (originally a study) is my older boys' room when they come home from college.
Middle boys' bedroom (13 and 11 years)
Little boys' bedroom (3 and almost 1)
Small girl room (17 year old alone)
Bigger girl room (9, 7 and 5 years)

When both my older boys were home and not yet in college, they each had their own room.  At that point we had made the bonus room a bedroom too.  I do try to give each child their own room when they hit the teenage years, if at all possible.  My current 13 year old hasn't complained yet or begged for his own room, so I'm leaving things as is for now.  I know we are blessed to have a large home for our brood, but we have really been creative in the past with rooms.  I do love the way all my kids love to be with each other, especially in the evening.  I think they would all be so lonely if they had their own rooms!

Two Cribs....A First

My new "little boy" room!

Ben moved out of the above room, and Matthew and Patrick moved in!  I sent some pictures to Ben and he wasn't too thrilled with the new decor and the fact that his bed is gone.  Don't worry, Ben still has a place to "lay his head" so to speak.  I moved his bed into Will's room old room (which is now the school room) and so now that room is the college boy/homeschool room.  I haven't had a "little boy" room in a while, so it was fun decorating it.  The big difference in this room and my other children's rooms, is that we now have 2 cribs.  Matthew is 2 1/2 and not at all ready to get out of his crib.  My typical children were all out somewhere between 2 and 3, with no problem.  But Mattie is not there yet.  So we found a great white IKEA crib on craigslist for super cheap and now I have a room that looks almost like a twin boy room.  Patrick is sleeping in there almost the whole night now and is sleeping so much better.  I feel like a new woman getting about 6-7 hours straight of sleep a night.  We didn't even have to let him "cry it out", which I am not a big fan of anyway.  But, he just didn't smell me and I didn't hear all his little noises in the night and so we are both sleeping so much better.  Below are so recent pics of my precious little guys.

My cute little guy in his favorite pj's.

Patrick trying on hats in the craft store : )