The kids’ preschool is closed tomorrow and, of course, Monday, so I’m faced with the prospect of finding something entertaining and exhausting to do with the kids or… well, there really is no other option because I don’t want to look back on the day and see only whiny kids who were dragged to work and the grocery store and spent the majority of their time playing on my phone or watching movies. So! The Everett Children’s Museum it is!
In other news, does anyone want to buy a bed? It’s Charles’s old captain’s bed and we have it listed on craigslist for $200. I’m willing to negotiate, though, as I would like to get it out of my garage. Disregard if you don’t live within nearby, obviously, as I am unwilling to coordinate shipping of this solid wood monstrosity to Timbuktu.
The bunk bed situation is working out well. I think I must worry about the wrong things, because I’ve had several people ask me how I deal with Jamie getting out of bed now, and I guess I just never thought of it as an issue. He’s a toddler with a highly-developed sense of mischief. I always knew he was going to climb out of bed. Hell, he did it with the crib. The big difference now is that he’s closer to the floor, so I worry less about him breaking a leg in the act of absconding from his bed.
He gets out of bed and wanders down the hall every night. Sometimes he sees me and whines for me to pick him up because he wants cuddles, sometimes he sees me and plasters a shit-eating grin across his face and runs away (you think he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing? Oh, he does.). My reaction is always the same: I calmly take him back to bed. I offer him the choice of sleeping in his crib or his new bed. If he gets out more than three times, I put him in his crib, and this makes him mad and gives him a consequence (no bed if you continue to get out). I offer to lie down with him, but he refuses. Sometimes we parry for ten minutes, sometimes an hour, but I know he’ll eventually stop. He’ll eventually just go to bed when it’s time.
I reminded Tony last night that we spent weeks snuggling up to Charles in his new, big bed (see photo above) when he was two years old, just to get him to sleep. This often meant that one of us would fall asleep with him. For WEEKS. Not an ideal situation, but you do what you must to make your kids comfortable and your evenings not full of screaming (at least not the angry-toddler kind). Charles grew out of that and Jamie will grow out of this.
And really, once they’re asleep, they’re asleep. Jamie doesn’t wake much in the night anymore and I haven’t heard him trekking down the hallway in the middle of the night at all, so I remain unworried.
No one else seems worried, either.
In conclusion, you there, mama who is going crazy with anxiety over moving her toddler from a crib to a bed: cheer up. It will work out. You will have to make concessions for awhile, but I promise that you too will eventually be bribing your four-year-old with a Transformer toy if he goes to sleep without a fuss for a whole month. Hmm, that doesn’t sound so encouraging, does it? What I mean is, that crib has a weight limit, so you don’t really have a choice and you can’t fully anticipate all the ways in which your kids will drive you bonkers about bedtime, so you might as well just go for it. I find it helps to stock up on wine and chocolate for all of life’s potentially infuriating changes.
*****
Happy Labor Day, I hope you’re all doing something fun with your families.
3 comments:
you're talking to me, aren't you? :) I keep saying "this weekend" but.... maybe this weekend?
Oh, you're not the only one! ;) I think it's a strange sign if the times that we obsess over all sorts of things perhaps just because we're so used to double-checking our gut with the Internet. There is no right way, and sometimes the only thing you can do is try something and then deal with the consequences. At this stage of life, Charles responds to bribery and Jamie responds to consequences (and the threat thereof). You'll find a way that works to make the bed transition, I'm sure of it.
Ha! I thought you were talking to me :) Nico has managed to get his leg stuck between the crib slats when he's standing on the crib corner waiting to be picked up. This is an indication to me that we need to transition to a bed... BUT this month has been a patchy month of daycare provided by family, and next week he's starting at the regular daycare, and so I don't want to try the bed transition when there are other transitions in his life...
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