I shared this room recently with photos of the bunk beds we installed so all three girls can sleep in the same room, and I have gotten several questions on how we make that work.  Putting more than one kiddo in the same room can feel a little overwhelming (let's be honest, sleep is a commodity as a parent, so voluntarily doing something that might make the little people not sleep is scary!), so I'm sharing what we did to make it work.  I'm sure there are lots of other ways to do this, so please comment if you have ideas!

(1) Ellie goes to be right at 7 (sometimes a little before if she didn't nap well during the day).   Her routine is really simple; we let her finish up some milk if she didn't drink enough, and then we read a book, sing a song, and lay her down.  We use a sound machine, so we turn that on and close the blackout curtains and turn off the lights.

(2) The big girls don't go to bed until 7:30 or 8, depending on how the day went.  Instead of doing their usual routine of reading books, saying prayers, family rules and singing songs in their room, we do it in the living room, all snuggled on a sofa.  Then we tell them we have to sneak like ninjas into their room.  We aren't overly quiet, but we keep the lights off and quietly tuck the girls into their beds, and Ellie usually doesn't even notice because she is already asleep.  They love their night light (that we even travel with, ha!), so we also keep that on so they can see.  We also usually put a light blanket over it so it isn't too bright.

(3) Ellie rarely wakes up at night, but sometimes the big girls do, if they need to go to the potty or if they have a bad dream.  Sometimes this wakes up Ellie, which can be tricky, because she gets excited seeing her big sisters in the room.  When Brigie first started sharing with Vivi, she didn't really wake up - she is a more sound sleeper.  The first couple of nights, I had to kind of soothe Ellie back to sleep with some back patting, but the third night she went right back to sleep.  I think eventually they get used to it, and either sleep through their siblings waking, or it just doesn't bother them.

It's easy to be intimidated, but really they can do it!  Brigie and Vivi have been sharing a room since Brigie was about 18 months old, and stayed in the same room when we traveled starting when Brigie was about 10 months old.  So far, we haven't had any nights where everyone wakes up and won't go back to sleep, which was my biggest fear when letting them share.  It's so great knowing they can do it, especially for traveling and such.  I'm much less stressed knowing they can all sleep in the same room and it isn't too big of a deal.

So, there you have it!  I know this isn't super revolutionary, but I find sometimes it's helpful just to hear how others handle it.  Let me know if you have any questions or other genius ideas for getting kiddos to share a room!