First Night in a Big Boy Bed

It had to happen eventually.  As much as we wanted to contain our two-year-old in a crib forever, we knew the time would come when we would have to unleash him on the world, sleeping unrestrained in a big boy bed.  Since I have been having back problems, and lifting him in and out of the crib seemed to be in the back pain category, I decided that yesterday would be the day.

When Ruby switched from a crib to a bed, we had no problems with the transition.  In fact, we hardly noticed there was a transition.  She seemed not to be aware that the crib walls had come down, and she stayed in her bed until we came to get her every naptime and every morning.  My wife and I would laugh and wonder when the first day would be that we would see her little face peeking out from a doorway unexpectedly.  And that day was a long time in coming.  She was perfectly content to stay in her bed.  We put her there, and she stayed until someone got her out, crib or no crib.  But we knew that Edward was going to be different.

For starters, Ruby never tried to escape from her crib.  I don’t think it ever occurred to her that she might want to get out and wreak havoc.  This occurs to Edward all the time.  I often go into his room to find him with one foot sticking out the top of the crib.  Luckily it was too high for him to get out of, but I knew he was trying.  Therefore, I also knew that as soon as I took the crib walls down and converted it into a toddler bed, he would be escaping as soon as possible.

As I unscrewed and rescrewed and attached and banged away at his bed yesterday, Edward watched with fascination.  He was so excited, and when I had finally finished he climbed into his new bed and asked for a bottle of milk.  I had to tell him that his nap time was not for several more hours, but he was not deterred.  Less than an hour later I found him back in the bed, asking for milk again.

This boded well, I thought.  He seemed to want to be in the bed, and didn’t seem to want to get out of it and escape.  When nap time did finally come around, he jumped into his bed enthusiastically and went right to sleep.  Fabulous news!  And when he woke up two hours later, we heard the door open and saw him at the top of the stairs looking sleepy with a confused smile on his face, as if he couldn’t believe that he had just woken up and gotten out of bed, just like that!

When bedtime came, we put him down with his bottle and hoped for the best.  What we didn’t take into account was that there was now a sister in the room with him.  We said goodnight, closed the door, and waited approximately two seconds.  It was at this time that the thumping and screaming started.  Ruby burst from the room complaining that Edward was jumping on her, and Edward ran around in his Superman jammies (with cape) laughing maniacally.

We gave him another bubba and put him back down, with the same results.  In the end we had to move Ruby to our room until Edward fell asleep, which he did quickly with his distraction removed.  When we went to bed we moved Ruby out of our bed and back into her’s and went to sleep.  And then, bright and early, we were awoken to the sounds of violence, because Edward had gotten up at 6 and decided to jump up and down on Ruby while she was sleeping.

So it’s a work in progress.  Ruby asked us to put the bars back up on his crib, or else move her to different room, but we’re not going to do that.  The genie is out of the bottle, and Edward loves his new bed.  It’s just going to take some time to adjust.  And to ensure that he doesn’t jump on me in the night, I might just add some crib bars to my bed and see how that goes.