A Room of Her Own

 Our youngest child (6 years old) has moved into her own room.

She has shared a room with her older sister for… oh, I don’t even know how many years. It worked pretty well until last spring. Then they were home all the time because of the pandemic, plus everyone was getting older and more opinionated, so we got squabbles. Lots and lots of squabbles.

Over the summer, big sister moved all the toys out of their room into the attic/study (where I work) – because, I guess, being 10 means she is too old to play with dolls, Calico critters, and doll houses. It actually worked out pretty well. C spent hours last summer playing quietly in her new play-space while I did my work. When I wasn’t working, kids could build sprawling cities and roads, put together fancy LEGO houses, play “school”, and dress up the dolls. And you know what, big sister joined C and they would play together nicely, and sometimes all 3 would be busy with some construction project and my husband and I would be, like, “oh, we did something right! Look at these wonderful children playing so well together”, and then 2 minutes later “oh, never mind!” - because it would all dissolve into a horrible sibling fight.

We finally finished painting C’s room over the winter break. She wanted it all purple – we agreed on a very light shade. I was a bit worried about the final outcome, but the room looks really cute. We split apart the bunkbed (my husband’s old bunkbed that he and his siblings shared), so each girl has her own bed. Grandparents have a desk for her that they are re-painting (purple, I expect). For now, we put in my old kitchen folding table from the good old days in Chicago. There is a bookshelf that C filled with books and art stuff. Then C moved in a pile of toys and now there isn’t much room for… anything. I got to figure out some storage solutions for her...

Also, my study looks like a junk room (because lots of toys and random boxes are all over the place here – how did this happen?) and needs a major cleaning.

C is doing virtual school in her room now… We’ll have to work out whether it is best if she still does school work next to us (we set up workspaces for her both in my study and our bedroom where my husband works, so we can take turns being parents-on-duty and still get some work done) or if she’ll do most of her work in her room and comes to parent-on-duty when she has questions.

I am curious to see if in a few weeks the girls would decide they miss each other terribly and decide to do a sleepover…