The Prince and the Pea – The Big Boy Bed Debacle
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You know the story –
This chick doesn’t have anything on my boy. I’ve received a few emails over the past few weeks inquiring on our progress with Sawyer’s big boy bed.
For those of you who need a reminder: he launched himself from his crib a few months back.
Anyway, the Mister and I didn’t waste any time getting him out of his crib.
To ease the transition, we simply put his crib mattress on the floor – with plans to replace with his twin mattress and eventually elevate to his big boy bed.
He’s still on the crib mattress.
We tried the new mattress for a night and I immediately had the Mister remove it – I think the “quilted” top was bothering, since he’s used to his mattress surface resembling slab of wood. The mattress also had that “new mattress smell” that I really wasn’t comfortable having him sleep on. It’s been airing out in our spare bedroom and I plan to give it another go this week (with a mattress cover we purchased which should alleviate the “quilted” surface issue).
We did have a bit of a regression with putting him to sleep. I would normally place him in the crib, say night night and walk away. Even if he whined a bit, he’d be asleep within minutes. But NOW, he can physically stand up and walk around his room whining, screaming and throwing things. A few times, he’s walked to the door and opened it and yelled, “open the gate!” (same thing he does every morning…but we’ll touch on that in a bit – you won’t want to miss it J)
Not exactly as easy as shutting the door and walking away anymore.
Now it’s, “rub my back, mommy,” “one more song,” fix the blanket,” OR ELSE.
We’ve finally gotten to the point where I can sing one song in the rocking chair, place him on the mattress, put on his music for one rotation and sit outside his room where he can see me for a minute or so, until I slowly shut the door.
Easy as pie.
Until the morning. At roughly 4 am, EVERY.SINGLE.MORNING. the little lark wakes up. In the past, we let him squirm and whine a bit until he fell back to sleep in his crib. Now, he waltzes out of bed, opens his door and rattles his gate until someone comes to him – much harder to ignore, no? We’ve found that if we go to him, we can normally get him to sleep for another hour or so – and if we wait too long, he gets so riled up and isn’t tired enough to fall back asleep. I’d say half of the days of the week, he bypasses the 4am awakening and holds off until 5:15 – but at this point, he is full of smiles and joy, asking for playtime.
For those of you still reading, yes, you have done the math correctly – I have not slept past 6:00 a.m. my own home in the past *almost*2 years. More often than not, this stat is actually 5:30, I’m being conservatively generous for the sake of not being over-dramatic.
But progress is progress, right?
My goal is to have him on the twin mattress by the end of the month (sometimes he wakes himself up if his leg is hanging off the bed, the larger mattress would help in that dept.). Of course by the time we get used to that, we’ll likely be right back in set-back city with potty training.
Until then, I’ll be having that extra cup of coffee, using extra foundation under my eyes and serving my little prince as best I can.
Thanks for the update. You must be so tired poor thing!
Have you thought about putting the twin right on the bed frame with one of those protector things so he can’t roll of the side? it might feel safer to him since it’s more crib-like. Just a though in case you didn’t think of it.
I am dreading this moment. Raffi tries to climb out all the time. Actually he tries to climb everything. I’m hoping he isn’t successful for a lonnnnng time. I’m fine with having a big boy in regards to everything but bed!
My little man is 16 months old and has not *yet* tried to climb out of the crib. I am perfectly happy with him staying in his crib as long as possible.Right now, bedtime is super easy, but I have a feeling when the crib goes, it will be a whole new ballgame!