Big Boy Bed

The milestones seem to be rolling in this month and as usual I'M NOT READY. I like to think of myself as a flexible person who doesn't mind going with the flow. Isaac says I'm unstructured to say the least. But somehow when it comes to Zach's development, I'm never ready for the next step. This has been the case all along. I was 6 days overdue when Zach finally decided to join the world, I still was in no rush. I remember thinking... he's quiet, he sleeps when he wants, eats when he wants and portable. It's not going to get any better than this. It does get better than that, but it takes a while. When Zach started walking 3 days before his 8 month birthday, I was resistant to say the least. I remember friends saying "he's walking" and saying "well kind of". He's been on the move since birth it seems. He never wanted to lie down, at 6 weeks he would stand (leaning to one side) in a jumper, or on your lap. He's been a man of motion.

At 6 months Zach learned how to pull himself to standing in his crib. He didn't know how to get back down, so he would just stand there and cry. He was compulsive about it. He would wake up in the middle of the night and crawl over to the side and pull himself up. It took him 5 weeks to figure out how to get down. We initially decided to let him cry it out. It had worked for sleep training, so why not for this. Zach cried for an hour and 15 min, twice as long as he ever had for sleep training. When we went in to check on him. We found him asleep, still clutching the rails and having slid half way down. I've always been afraid that I'm setting a president with everything I do with Zach. I remember thinking, "If I go in and rock him to sleep he'll never learn to go to sleep on his own". I remember calling a friend of mine distraught. She wisely told me "Bryn, sometimes you need to just get through today". So for 5 weeks I would go in to his room at night and rock him back to sleep and then gently put him back in his crib. He did eventually figure out how to get down, thankfully.

Zach climbed out of his crib for the first time when he was about 14 months old. He is exploratory by nature. He wants to climb, jump and try everything. I was able to turn his crib around (because the back is taller than the front) and that stalled him for a while. But a few weeks ago he started doing it again. For a while it was just in the morning when he woke up, but then he figured out that if he got out of bed at nap time or bedtime someone would come back in and put him back in his crib. So like everything with Zach, it became a game. A game that Mommy was not fond of. Last Friday I spent an hour trying to get him down for a nap, he got out of his crib every time I closed the door. By the end of the 60 min I was hot, tired and irritated. Friends kept saying "I guess it's time for a big boy bed?". My less than subtle response was "NO!" I just kept thinking.. how am I ever going to keep him in a bed when I can't even keep him in a crib.

Isaac, being at this point the far more rational parent (probably because he didn't have to curl a 28 lbs 2 year old 60 times in 1 hour) suggested that we just remove the front of Zach bed. His crib converts into a toddler bed. Good thing I married such a wise man, or I'd probably be crazy by now. So Friday night while I gave Zach a bath Isaac worked his magic on the crib. Zach was very excited to see his now "big boy bed" that "Daddy had made". He laid down in it to go to bed and by some miracle "HE DIDN'T EVEN TRY TO GET OUT". I think the "You have to stay in your bed, but even if you don't I'm not coming back in here" lecture probably helped a little, but not much. It really is a miracle :) So Zach has not gotten out of his bed since last week, except for the 2 times he fell out... ouch :( But we went to IKEA today and got a bed rail, so no more thuds in the middle of the night.

So potty training and big boy bed have arrived, Lord help me, whatever is next... I'm sure I'm not ready for it. But what else is new...