Rearranged

If I owned the home we are in now, one of my first projects would probably be to finish off the basement.  But, we don't own it so we don't want to spend a ton of money on a place we don't own.  It is a fairly nice basement compared to other ones we have seen and it is nice to have a basement unlike some of the homes we rented.  Therefore, we did want to use the space even though it wasn't a finished basement.   It is finished enough though to put in a play room down there.

On one side of the basement (the larger area) is our washer/dryer and storage area.  The owners of the home, now our landlords, left us some shelving down there, and I have added some for my job materials.  It also has a half bath down there, not a pretty one, but now that Kyper is potty trained it is nice to have a bathroom closer to where we wanted him to play.

However, the first year and half Kyper would hardly play down there, especially by himself.  After a few trips to Holland, where Kyper would play great in my parent's basement or my in-laws' basement by himself, Joel and I decided that we needed to rearrange the basement to try to make it a little more homey feeling. (As well as a little less smelly--due to a sewage problem right when Anja was born our first area rug got a little smelly.  We thought we cleaned it enough but every once in a while that smell would come back.)  We also got our little tv back from Joel's brother and sister-in-law.  My idea was to put our Wii downstairs so he could watch netflix down there.  Draw him in with the tv, but with all his toys are down there, so I wondered if he'd start to play on his own.  Joel's parents also gave us a swing that we could hang from the rafters down there.  Joel's grandpa Rosema made a swing for each of his kids' families.

I don't have any before pictures, but here are some of the after pictures of the rearranging:

Before, we had a tan area rug, the now floating black loveseat was where you see the television in the picture above and we did not have the flags hung, so the walls were just white cinder block.    We think the red area rug makes the space feel a little warmer.  The rest of his toys are behind the floating couch.  Once we rearranged the furniture Kyper called it more like a room and now he spends a lot of his day down there playing and I don't have to be down there the whole time now either.

I could probably do a separate post, but the swing has made our lives so much easier too.  Thanks grandpa and grandma!  We took Kyper's pacifer away in July when he turned 3 and lets just saw bedtime become much harder.  Once he is asleep, Kyper is a great sleeper, but the pacifer helped him fall asleep.  So taking it away amped up his procrastination efforts and made momma and daddy a little frustrated at bed.  He also cut out naps soon after turning 3, because if he napped he wouldn't go to bed until 10 and still would wake up before 7 sometimes before 6.   If he doesn't nap he will go to bed between 7-8pm and wake up 6-7 (if we are lucky 7:30am).  Well I don't know if it is just because of the swing or if it is school or if Kyper is just getting a little older, since the beginning of the year, bedtime has been so much easier.  He now will have a bedtime snack and watch a little something downstairs.  He typically gets done with his snack and starts to swing.  He swings for 15 minutes and some nights he comes up on his own and tells us he is ready for bed.  Other nights, we call him up but there is no arguing.  He then brushes his teeth and we read to him.  He hops into his bed and now rarely comes out (if he does it is just once to tell us a silly little snippet from his day).  This is a much welcome change and we think some of it has to do with him getting his energy out on the swing.