(Hello people! We are sort-of alive!)
The night before we went on vacation, the J-man hit a milestone: he learned to climb out of his crib. He learned it so well that he did it until 3 AM, when he finally collapsed into sleep… and then so did we, because he hasn’t yet learned to climb back in. (I was up 3 1/2 hours later to get ready to leave, and let me tell you, driving a 7-hour drive that turned into a 9 1/2-hour drive with a crying baby on 3 1/2 hours sleep is bad.) The way we found out he knew how to climb out of his crib? Tim turned on the video monitor to take a last look at the J-man for the night, and said, “Where’s our son?” We searched FRANTICALLY, and ended up finding him curled up in his closet, door closed, stuff piled on him. ACK!
So now we have this problem – he likes his crib, and he likes sleeping in it. But he also likes climbing out, and then can’t get back in.
Scene: Bedtime for J-man
Having just closed the door to the J-man’s room after setting him in his crib, Mary runs into our bedroom where the video monitor (very old, WIRED, monitor is the size of an old Mac Classic and sits on Mary’s dresser) is already turned on. As soon as Mary sees the J-man hike his leg to the top of the crib side, she RUNS back to his room and opens the door…and the J-man plops back down. *cue innocent whistling sound effect* Mary says “Good Night” and closes the door.
The J-man makes lots of noise, rustling around in his crib, standing up, and propping the same leg over the side of the crib. Mary RUNS back to his room and opens the door… and the J-man plops back down. Mary says “Good Night” and closes the door.
The J-man looks all around, trying to figure out how Mama knows he is trying to get out of the crib. He stealthily stands up, quietly eases his leg up over the side of the crib… and BAM – Mary opens the door! The J-man plops back down innocently, and looks over as if to say, “Who, me?” Mary says “Good Night” and closes the door.
Repeat one of those 3 vignettes.
Repeat.
Repeat!
REPEAT…
REPEAT!!!eleventy-one!!
End Scene: J-man is sleeping
Of course, the whole time I’m trying not to laugh out loud (we do snicker quietly), because the J-man really is confused as to how we know when he’s climbing out.
We’ve gotten better at it. Tonight I only had to run in 3 times total. (Of course, now that I’ve written this, tomorrow night I’ll be there for 2 hours running back and forth.)
We still haven’t decided whether to just change the crib over into a toddler bed (but the J-man tends to fall out – not that falling out wakes him!), try a crib tent (he’s almost 5; I think he could tear one of those to pieces the first night), or just make the jump to a big bed (again with the falling out issue). (Also, could I write more parenthetically?)
In the meantime, I’m getting my exercise just running up and down the hall.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Unless he’s going at the thing with scissors or a knife, it’s nearly impossible to tear the crib tent. Not entirely impossible; we’ve gone through a couple from Nik’s gawdawful SIB bouts where they get stretched/stressed at the seams. He’ll be 7 in December. We’re going to have to switch to a bed simply bc he’s getting too tall.
But, it stopped the climbing! Good luck!
We’ve gone the crib-tent route, and have had a very good experience with it. Probably too good — Joy’s over a year older than the J-Man, and is still crib-tenting it! She hasn’t ripped her way out yet, and it’s been several years.
We just discovered and are still considering a product we found online for a potential next bedding step:
http://www.myreadysetbloom.com/ It’s a bed-tent made to fit a twin-mattress, and looks similar to the PeaPod Plus travel nap-tent that Joy uses at daycare, except much bigger and rectangular. I’ll blog about it if we do go for it — though it’s on backorder and won’t start shipping again till September, so it’d be a while. We’ll see.
Good luck! This night-time arrangements stuff can be so tricky.
Eve is neurotypical and never did climb out of her crib, but in an effort to keep the number of transitions down, we went straight from a crib to a twin mattress on the floor, without a bed frame. It was the same height off the floor as a toddler bed would have been, and when we were no longer worried about rolling or falling out of bed, we took the metal bedframe down from the attic and set it up. That was an easier transition for her than going from a toddler bed to a “big bed” would have been.
I am so relieved to hear that you all still have your kids in cribs. Moe has been getting up a lot at night with such manic energy. He can climb out of his crib, but doesn’t, and I dread the day he decides it’s time. I don’t want to see that manic energy running all over the house at 2 am.
No words of advice – just hoping to learn from you on this one
Well, today I see that he has learned a NEW skill – climbing back INTO the crib. We heard him awake at 6 this morning, but both Tim and I were so tired that we just stayed in bed, especially since the J-man can’t get out of his room (yet). I eventually heard the thump of him jumping down from the crib, but a little later, I heard him kicking the side of the crib again. Hmmm… went in, and the lamp was on the floor; the noise machine was turned upside down; the tiny rocking chair was placed on top of a side table… but the J-man himself was back in the crib!
Good for J-Man on the “climbing back in” thing! If you can get him to climb in at bedtime, that might could save you some parental-back-pain! With Joy, we have her do most of the climbing and then just help tip her in — she can do it herself, but I like the headfirst tumble in to be a little more controlled.
Always an adventure!
Hi! My son, Seth, just turned 3 and we’ve been using the bed tent from “My Ready Set Bloom.” Seth loved his crib, but began chewing the wood and pretty much destroyed it. We tried the toddler bed and mattress on the floor, but we just battled him destroying everything in his room and him trying to escape his room. The bed tent is the perfect solution for us! Seth loves it and so do we! I highly recommend it. Seth did tear a small hole in the mesh, but we just sewed it up!
So far, he hasn’t really tried to climb out during the night since Mary wrote this, though he will climb out in the morning on his own when we go in to get him. Sometimes with the J-Man, if you can finagle the routine from something that causes issues to something better (at least from our perspective), then it may ‘stick’. Not sure how to describe it better than that.
If he gets in his mind that some particular way is how something works, he’ll often stay with that way. This is more from his rigidity toward a lot of things, which has a variety of pluses and minuses. But if you can work something into his comfort zone with a process, it might hold. Perhaps we’ve done that here, at least for the time being. It can change on a dime around here, though.
We’re looking into the various tent options, too. Obviously, we’d like to get him into a toddler bed and not have any issues with that transition, but I’d also like to be 40 pounds lighter and extremely wealthy. Like many things, it’ll probably be the ‘Boiled Spaghetti Method’ – throw everything at the problem and see what sticks.