DIY loft-style beds for our boys

Plenty of play room now!

The bedroom that our twin boys share is a reasonable size for an single child with a single bed, a single dresser, and a single set of toys.  When you double the amount of furniture and toys there is very little space left for playing.  And twin boys like to play!  When we first moved into our house we took the opportunity to upgrade the boys’ beds and purchased for them what are known as captain’s beds (twin-size, with a bookcase headboard and drawers underneath for clothing)  We thought ourselves pretty smart when we saw the beds on sale, thinking that we would be saving so much space by moving their clothing to the drawers in each bed.  We purchased quickly.  We purchased without measuring.  We purchased poorly.

The youngsters in their new hideout!

It rapidly became apparent that the captain’s beds just took up too much room.  They barely had room to walk around the sides of their beds and only a small space was left between.  After staring at the problem off and on for some months it occurred to me that a loft-bed would be a great solution!  Getting the beds up off of the floor would open the entire room up for play area, the room beneath the beds would provide a private sanctuary for each boy, and best of all I’d seen plans on the internet of adventurous dad’s that had built the loft-beds by hand!

The original sketch of the loft bed design

Armed with my trusty notebook, a pencil and a ruler I set out to sketch the plans of what would eventually become the twins new loft bed.   After working through several designs, I finally settled on one that would place the beds along a single wall, the ends of the beds butting up against each other and a ladder in the middle for access.

It took two weekends and several trips to the hardware store to assemble all the bits and pieces, and I ended up making several design alterations during construction.   The end result is two twin beds that are comprised of three main pieces each.  There is the main platform which was assembled using two 2×4’s as the long sides of the platform and 9 1×4 slats to provide solid mattress support.  Each end of the bed was made from two 1×6’s with two 2×4’s providing lateral support.   By removing eight lag bolts, the entire bed can be taken apart into the three pieces for easy storage and transport (I have this strange notion that the boys are actually going to want to take these with them when the go off to college in a decade and a half!  I know, I’ m a bit delusional!)

Showing the slats under the bed

By placing the beds end to end along one wall, I was able to create a central pillar for a ladder which is secured to both beds with two short lengths of 2×4 which twist into place.   The last pieces to go on were the removable side rails.  These needed to be long enough to cover 3/4ths the length of each bed, sturdy enough to prevent either boy from falling out of the bed and easy enough to remove when tending to a sick child or changing the linens.

The twins have been using (and sometimes abusing) the loft-beds for nearly eight months.  They are holding up very well and are still very sturdy.  Mom added curtains to the underside of each bed shortly after the pictures were taken, creating the sanctuary space that each boy needed when living in a shared room.

With the safety rail in place

The railings are almost never removed, but it’s nice to know that they can be if the need ever arose.  The response from the twins has been fantastic, the kids in the neighborhood think that the boys have the coolest beds, and all it cost dear old Dad was a couple of weekends and less than $150.00!

Now that I’m finished with these space-saving loft-style beds for the twins, my next project will be a similar style bed for their sister, but that won’t be until next summer and will most likely involve princesses and somehow I have to figure out how to make it look like a castle!  But that’s still a few months away.

05.06.02

* HAPPY BIRTHDAY RONAN AND KEENAN!!! Today is the boys’ first birthday! Wow, the past year has just flown by! It seems like yesterday that Faith showed me our first ultrasound and proclaimed “We’re having twins!!” Now the boys are already standing and crawling and chewing on everything with their new teeth! The best thing to see is when they chase each other around the house laughing at each other. They have developed such a great bond with each other and with Logan. To see how much Logan has grown into the role of big brother is quite impressive, as well. He is always ready to help out with the twins (except diaper changes ::grin::) Ronan and Keenan have their one year checkup today, so I should have some accurate stats later today.
* Logan was also a great help at his grandpa’s house on Sunday. He trimmed the weeds and helped spread mulch.
* The barbecue went very well on Saturday and the couch was delivered on time. Two things about the couch: first, it’s much bigger than I originally thought. It will have to be the only furniture downstairs as nothing else will fit now. (Actually, it’s not the couch that’s too big, I just thought the room was bigger than it actually is) Second, when the couch was delivered, it had several large grease marks on it. So now we are beginning a battle with the furniture store to get that fixed or replaced. Stay tuned….

02.04.02

* Big news on the baby front! Ronan has sprouted a tooth! Both Keenan and Ronan have been teething for some time, and it looks like they are both cutting the same tooth, in the same location! Well, I guess that’s the norm for twins! I was letting Ronan chew on my finger for a second when the sharp pain let me know that his tooth had broken through!
* Teeth are a good sign, and that means we have moved up to bigger, less mushy (but still mushy) foods. And… CHEERIOS! WooHoo! Boy, Ronan just can’t get enough of them! Keenan likes them, but isn’t real sure on the whole proximo-distal thing just yet, but he’s working on it! (that would be the hand-to-mouth reflex, usually illustrated by the ability to place a cheerio in their mouth)

06.17.01

06.17.01
Today Keenan and Ronan are six weeks old!!! (the time is already flying by!)

05.28.01

I put a temporary twins page in place of the old one and posted a few of the new pictures as well as some AVI vid clips. In order to save some disk space at my hosting company, I decided to put the avi’s on my ISP’s server. Unfortunately, it looks like they have implemented disk quotas and I went over my limit there with the video files so they were removed. All but the video of Keenan will need to be reloaded once I find a bit more space to hold them.

Paul has finally taken the giant stride into the twentieth century now that he has e-mail!!! He sent a rather noteworthy e-mail in response to the birth of the twins and in particular had this to say about Ronan (who was born breech):
I see that Ronan had a statement for everybody upon his arrival……
“HERE I AM WORLD…YOU CAN KISS MY BUTT!!!”
Yes, that would be another infamous “Brahlerism”!
Brahlerism: def. One of many pithy quotes coming from Mr. Brahler.

The twins are doing wonderful at home. Last night was a bit rough, though. We managed to overstimulate them and get them off their schedule. Wow. I don’t want to do that again! I was able to get to sleep around 3:00am, poor Faith only slept for a few minutes at a time throughout the night. With the help of a book called “The Baby Whisperer” by Tracey Hogg, we have made great strides in our understanding of why the babies are behaving the way they are. According to the book, we have to remember that since they were born premature (by seven weeks) they still need to have their environment as close to womb-like (no bright light, very quiet, NO disturbances ) as possible. Yesterday, we had the TV on in the bedroom, the lights were up, we were constantly holding and playing with the babies- all of which is definately NOT conducive to a womb-like atmosphere! Once we realized this (Faith read the chapter on preemies from 2:30am to 3:00am) Faith fed the boys and then swaddled them. Lo and behold! they pretty much went right back to sleep and now are pretty much back on the correct schedule.

Ronan and Keenan are on a three hour feeding schedule which does not leave much time for sleep (or anything else for that matter) I managed to take three days off last week so I could help get things under control here ::insert snide chortle here:: before I go back to work tomorrow. Faith’s friend Connie should be here tomorrow to help while I am at work, but I may take another day or two just to be on the safe side.

On a completely different note, I have finally won an auction on Ebay! That is, of course, because I took advantage of someone’s “Buy it Now” option and didn’t bother with the whole bidding thing. I found a rather nice, modestly priced HP 360LX handheld PC that with luck will be arriving later this week. I am anxiously awaiting my new toy! (I have already found two different versions of Emacs that is supposed to run on windowsCE)

Speaking of Mr Gates’ empire, as everyone who knows me will attest, I am not overly fond of using, promoting or otherwise mentioning ANY Micro$oft product. Until now. I have been minding my finances electronically for several years now, using an old copy of MS Money. Being the anti-Gates zealot that I am constantly being accused of, I desperately wanted to find a better financial software package. Well, Quicken is as good as it gets, at least in the eyes of several of my peers. Three words for my peers: you are wrong. At the end of last year, I switched over to Quicken from Money. Since I always use Turbo Tax to do my taxes, (and I will continue to do so as it IS the superior Tax software) I purchased the Quicken Suite which includes Quicken, Turbo Tax and some sort of Legal forms thingie that crashes every time I try to open it. Well, as I mentioned before, Turbo Tax worked flawlessly and I filed my taxes and received my refund long before I gave up on trying to utilize Quicken. Not only is the interface completely boggling to all but those too blinded to try something else, the blasted package mangled my accounts by occasionally downloading payments more than once. (at one point, Quicken claimed that I was approx $8000.00 in the hole!!! ) This was the final straw- after all, I can work with a poor GUI (I’ve been running MS Windows on one of my boxes at home for some time, and I manage with that!) but not being able to rely on the data that was presented, that I cannot abide! So instead of reverting to my old, tried and true version of MS Money, I upgraded to the latest version. Installation was a snap, electronic payments are intuitive, reconciliations are simple. The whole product just proves that there are different groups of people in Redmond who just don’t seem to talk to one another. (Bill, are you listening, this is the only time I will ever say this:) Microsoft has by far the superior product! (stop laughing, Mark).

05.23.01

Today is the day! The twins are finally home! I had planned on finding the right screws to finish the crib this morning, but Faith called and I realized that she didn’t have any breakfast! So as soon as I got Logan off to school, I jumped in the car and headed to McDonald’s to get her the big breakfast. I figured that I could drop off breakfast, head to the hardware store to get the screws for the crib, get home, put it together and then head back up to the hospital in time to bring everyone home. Well, things just didn’t quite work out that way… I ended up staying with Faith and the boys until it was time to come home. Keenan and Ronan got their pictures taken before we left (soon to be posted on the twins page, I promise!) and then about noon, we headed home.

What an absolutely joyous gift we have in these boys! It is so wonderful to have them home! As we were driving home it finally sank in: We have children!

05.16.01

Visited Keenan and Ronan at the hospital on my lunch hour. Ronan was fast asleep, but Keenan had just eaten, so I sat and held him for about thirty minutes before I had to go back to work. There is another baby in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) that arrived a couple of days after our boys, and he gets to go home tomorrow. I am really ready for the twins to come home. I know that they need to be in the NICU for a while, and that it’s the best place for them, but it just doesn’t feel right without them at home.

Last night I downloaded the demo to Age of Empires II for Logan. He and I transferred across the home lan and installed it on his pc. Wow! It looks like a really cool, historically-based game (in the first campaign, you play William Wallace and try to defeat Longshanks) After going through the start-up screens, the game switches from 800×600 to 1024×768 (the default for the demo) Unfortunately, Logan’s monitor/video card doesn’t seem to support the higher res. We tried quite a few tricks to get it to work (the vidcard is a Diamond Stealth 16meg card, so I’m reasonably sure the card supports the resolution ) The monitor is a rather old 14in VGA monitor. (it was my original monitor that I purchased with my 386DX25 from A-Z -ahhh, the good old days!) So I guess we will try swapping out monitors tonight, although I don’t think we’ll have much time since we need to start moving books and knick-knacks to prepare for the new carpet tomorrow.

Thanks to Tracey for the mention on her webpage and to Amber for the kind words she sent.

05.13.01

05.13.01
The babies have arrived!!!! At 7:49pm on May 6th, (one week ago tonight) Keenan Jeffrey came into the world! Twenty four minutes later at 8:13pm, his brother, Ronan Jeffrey followed suit! Keenan weighed in at 4 lbs 2.4 oz and 17 1/2 inches long. Ronan weighed in at 4 lbs 5.8 oz and 18 1/2 inches long. They arrived nearly seven weeks early, but they are doing great! It has been a full week now, Mom has come home and the boys will be coming home soon. They are absolutely beautiful! (don’t take my word for it, check out the pictures) Faith has been keeping a daily journal that will be posted on the twins page shortly. There are many more pictures that will also be posted shortly. If I can manage to edit some video, I will also post a couple of video clips of the boys.

So, the whole story. Faith had been experiencing some high blood pressure as well as a few other symptoms that lead her physician to believe that she was suffering from preeclampsia (sp?) This is a rather serious condition that occurs with some pregnant women with the only cure being delivery. On April 27th, Faith visited the doctor and was promptly placed in the hospital for observation. Due to the preeclampsia, there was a possibility that the doctors would have to take the babies early. In preparation for this, Faith was given a shot of steriods to help develop the babies’ lungs and intestines. However, after two days of observation Faith was allowed to come home on Sunday. About 2am the next morning, She found it very hard to breathe. We rushed back to the hospital to find that a side effect of the steriods and/or the preeclampsia caused her lungs to fill up with fluid. Not a good situation. After a couple of doses of lisix (a diuretic), her breathing improved dramatically. She stayed the night and came back home on Tuesday afternoon. Friday was another doctor’s appointment, and once again she was promptly admitted to the hospital. This time, however, Dr Durer said she would not be getting out until the babies came. Saturday morning they began to administer pitocin to help induce labor. By Sunday afternoon, we needed to make a decision whether or not to have the babies delivered by cesarean. We decided that we would wait a few more hours and see what would happen. Those few hours proved to be just what we needed. At 3:30pm, Faith was dilated to only one centimeter. By 6:45pm she had progressed to four (the contractions were getting longer and more intense). Since she had progressed this far, the doctor ordered the epidural to help block the pain. The anesthesiologist arrived in about five minutes and by 7:10, the epidural was in and beginning to take effect. The timing couldn’t have been closer. By 7:15, Faith was ready and began saying that it was time!!! We rushed into the maternity operating room where a support staff of about twenty people were waiting to assist. Keenan came right out, but over the weekend, Ronan had turned breech (his head was up, instead of down). The nurses spent about twenty minutes trying to get Ronan to turn around so that he could be delivered without a c-section. Ronan decided that he wanted to come into the world in his own way and so he actually came out bottom first! Even the doctor said he was quite surprised to see this! Ronan spent the first night with an oxygen tube to assist his breathing, but that was promptly removed the following day. They both lost a little weight about mid-week, but they have been slowly gaining it back ever since. As is customary, the whole immediate family was called as Faith went into “active” labor. As fast as we went to the O.R., there really wasn’t any time for anyone to get to the hospital, so you could imagine me surprise to find that my brother was in fact, already at the hospital! Apparently, he had a feeling, so he packed up his family and just headed to the hospital. By the time my mom had called him to let him know what was going on, he was already there.