A few months ago, at the beginning of the summer, Isaac started climbing out of his crib. Scaring us to death that he would plummet to the ground and break his little bones, which thankfully never happened, we set up his pack 'n play in front of his crib and he slept there all summer.
Sure, he still climbed out of it a time or two, but he was a lot closer to the ground, which eased our minds a lot. (And, we keep his door closed at night with a safety door knob cover on the inside so he can't escape and explore by himself on the 2nd story.)
Recently, he's grown like a weed and was literally head to heel in the pack 'n play. Because of the lack of space, he'd wake up more often.
Last weekend, we decided that it was time to transition him to another bed. Thanks to the Garage Saler Extraordinaire, Nana (aka my Mom), there was a spare toddler bed at my parents' house awaiting a big boy to fill it. Our plan was to pick it up on Sunday, but due to the rain, we had to postpone it.
So, on Sunday night, we took apart the crib, took down the pack 'n play, and put the crib mattress on the floor with a bunch of pillows surrounding it.
The first night, I was a nervous wreck. Isaac went down fairly early and I was up spinning my wheels doing random things around the house and checking in on him every hour. At about 11:30, I found him asleep on the carpet about 4 feet away from the mattress. The poor baby. I put him back in bed and strategically stacked the pillows vertically around the bed thinking that might prevent him from rolling off again. I'm not sure if that worked or not because at 4 AM we awoke to Isaac knocking on his door saying, "hey!" When Bryan opened the door, he had his blanket in hand and bolted to our room to snuggle in bed with us.
The second night, we wizened up and put the mattress in the corner so that two sides were against the wall. (Duh... we should have done that the first night.) We stacked the vertical pillows again and I twiddled my thumbs until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. He woke up in the same way and came into our bed.
We picked up the toddler bed mid-week and set it up in the same corner and surrounded it with pillows and a fluffy comforter. Since it uses the same mattress as the crib, it was an easy set-up.
Now, I feel the need to explain that Isaac takes after me. He and I are both avid Night Owls and I've never heard him request to go to bed before, but when he saw the first glimpse of his new bed he exclaimed, "BED! BED!!!" We spent about 30 minutes watching him climb in and out of his new bed and pretend to go to sleep and wake up over and over again. He probably did this 20-30 times before I ruined all of the fun and gave him a bath. He screamed, "BED!! Bed! WANT!" throughout the entire bath.
Isaac is doing well in his big boy bed. And he loves it. We're still waking up to him knocking on his door saying, "hey!" but, he's becoming a bigger boy every day.
I took some pictures of him in his toddler bed tonight and I can't help noticing that even though he's getting bigger, his toddler bed makes him appear smaller. Maybe they do this on purpose so that Mommies like me can transition easier, too? : )
