Co-sleeping {Update}

This is my life in minutia.

I've now had 4 straight nights of blissful slumber!
I feel like a new woman.
Ready to take on and conquer the world!
Which is good timing because I think WWIII happened in my home in my absence.
I figured out it had been almost 6 weeks since I had last had a good night's rest.  Too long in my book.  And 4 nights in a row feels like I have a new lease on life.

Thank y'all so very much for all the suggestions!  I so hope that someone else was able to read through the comments too and get some good ideas to make co-sleeping a success for them too.

My fist thought was going to be to take up the advice about putting baby Mimi in the middle of us, with her head at the bottom or the bed.  I mean after all, if I'm going to get repetitively kicked, I'd rather it be in the shins than the face and chest.  Instead, I was really really tired, and never made it that far.  Instead I collapsed and tried the snuggle-and-spoon-really-close technique for a nap time for both of us, and it worked fairly well... at least in the first 45 min.

So onto plan B or C, I couldn't decided between which of the 2 ideas I'd try next, was to either 1) kick Papa out of bed for a season with a reason.  Or 2) disassemble the bed and put the mattress on the floor with a twin or crib mattress shoved against it.  Really, I think the mattress-on-the-floor suggestions was probably one of the best ideas for us out there for us.  But Papa didn't want to do it mostly because the dismantled bed would be majorly cluttering up the garage.  But it was my favorite idea.

BUT in the end, we went with what was probably the easiest solution, and probably the one y'all already knew about, but I didn't know about because after all I'm a mother of "advanced maternal age."  {ouch}

Surfing on Craig's List we found a co-sleeper.  I didn't want to spend that kind of money for a new one, but on we found it for only $89, and because I live in a land of affluence it also came with the extra organic mattress and organic sheets.  None of it looked like it had ever been used.  I was so hesitant to use it, thinking it's only for infants... not bounding 2-year-olds.  But Papa convinced me that it was way safer than the chairs I had pushed up against the bed currently.  And we could just sell it if it didn't work out.

Mimi fell asleep in our bed that first night, and I transferred her to her own little bed that is connected to ours.  When she woke in the middle of the night, she crawled right back over to me, we spooned, and she drifted back off in a matter of seconds.  On night #2, she crawled back into her own little bed on her own.  And now she kinda just goes back and forth on her own.  When her narcoleptic somersault routine get too much for me, I just move her over to her own bed.  All hail the Arm's Reach Co-Sleeper!

Did I mention that I've had 4 straight nights of sleep?!  Oh ya, BABY!

It has been amazing!  I forgot what a good night's rest can do for the following day.

Which was good timing because I needed all my mental strength to deal with my teens this weekend.
Yep, things are back to normal 'round here!

ps-next up... Photoshop vs Lightroom.  What software I like to edit photos.