Guest Post
When you get the news that you’re going to be a grandma or grandpa, it can be a very exciting time. There is so much to do before the new baby arrives, and you want to offer assistance in any way that you can. Once the baby arrives and begins to grow, you can be sure that your offer of help will be taken up in the form of babysitting duties! Having your grandchildren over is of course wonderful, although it does take a bit of planning if you’re going to be having them overnight too. We have our two grandchildren over every few weeks for a night or two; they share a bedroom whilst they’re here. If you’re going to be in the same position shortly, you might find it helpful to read about what we did before they came over for the first time…
Bought a new bed
As we are limited on space, we decided to buy a bunk bed for the guest bedroom. This way we could fit two grandchildren in at the same time, whilst also giving them an experience they don’t get at home (they think the bed is very exciting). Clearly this might not be appropriate depending on the ages of your own grandchildren, but we have found it to be a very good solution to our lack of square footage. The bed is made from a study wood as we thought that some of the metal ones looked a bit flimsy, and we didn’t want it to creak lots in the night.
Considered the right bedding
Once we had the bed in place, we knew we’d need to get the right bedding for it too. The littlest one was to sleep on the bottom bunk, so we decided to get a waterproof mattress protector for when he stays (just in case), but we knew that the eldest would be fine on the top bunk without this. In terms of bedding we chose a pair of bouncy pillows and a goose down duvet for the top and bottom bunks.
Erected a bookshelf
Thinking back to when our own kids were little, we decided to put up a nice big bookshelf in the bedroom for story time. We spent quite a few weekends visiting charity shops, books sales and car boot sales to find books that were written with our grandchildren’s ages in mind. We bought some extra ones that will be good in a couple of years’ time as well as we will continue to have them over regularly then too. This is an inexpensive task, especially if you buy a second hand bookshelf.
Kitted the room out with accessories
Finally we had to think about all of the little touches that make a bedroom a nice place for a child. We put in wall lighting (in the shape of stars and moons) as well as handy bedside tables with lamps in case they were needed at night time. We also bought some night lights and teddy bears to keep the little one happy when he was staying with us.