Planning Ethan's big boy bedroom and the actual reality of it has taken huge compromise on my part. I have had to reconcile my clean colour coordinated clutter free imagined room with S' input and the fact that I am a 'boy mumma' with a full blown BOY toddler who loves nothing more than trucks (diggers preferably), dinosaurs and all other manner of boy things. I had a win on the colour scheme and that's about it.

I had envisaged a simple white bed and was all set to buy the Ikea Brimnes bed, patting myself on the back for its multipurpose use as a double bed AND with storage underneath. This would be paired with Ethan's existing cube shelving for his books and toys, a blue patchwork quilt and toning soft furnishings, his navy leather glider chair and maybe some framed prints or wall decals. Perfect!

Enter Scott on holidays and it was there my vision went to boy toddler heaven/mumma hell.

With time to spare, Scott decided we should go bed shopping for E. Wait up one second, didn't you listen when I told you the bed we were getting for E? Nope, clearly not ... so I let myself be dragged around to 6, yes, 6! bed shops inspecting various single beds of varying quality and with the toddler himself in attendance. One key thing quickly became clear.... all the singles I liked (with trundles, drawers underneath etc) were way too high for my titchy little guy to climb in and out of unassisted.

Now this is a deal breaker because I want him to be safe and secure in his room with the ability to get in and out of his bed. His room has minimal furniture for this exact reason with everything selected for its safety - nothing he can easily climb on, get caught in or pull down on himself - I've heard far too many a horror story of toddlers and furniture.

Unfortunately every low bed was either a toddler bed (which we were hoping to bypass) or just too girly looking. I was ready to give up when Scott told me he had one more store for us to check and this should have rung the alarm bells... Beds 4 Kids. We walked in and E instantly squealed and made a mad beeline for one bed in particular and then it dawned on me... I'd been played ... just like I usually play Scott.

There were a few regular bed frames, some loft style ones we loved but age inappropriate and the rest? They were unashamedly 'kids beds' ... you know, the themed ones of racing cars, princess carriages ('Princess Kate Carriage\' anyone?) and fire trucks. And there was my little boy sitting up on the fire truck bed with a smile of pure delight turning the steering wheel telling me 'toot toot.' I shook my head at Scott and he knew he had won.

Early on he advocated for a themed bed and I quickly shut down the notion as wasteful, impractical, cheap and nasty looking... you name it. But when I looked at E's joy and actually, the practicality of it, I wavered. It had a lot of great selling points including being low to the ground, surprisingly well made and not at all cheap looking in person, enclosed with side rails negating the need for big plastic bed rails and fun! So Scott and I discussed it at length, did some research and came up with:

• Ethan loved it - so it could help with the transition to his own room
• Safe in height and enclosed
• We can expect to get about 5 years out of it before it is too babyish but it has good resale 
• E is only going to be little for such a short time and it can't hurt to indulge that