Saturday, we went out and bought one of those rail guard thingies that attach to the side of the toddler bed, so Abby wouldn't fall out in the middle of the night. It wasn't until after we took the front rail off the crib and had the guard thing assembled that we realized we'd bought the wrong one. Oops! The one we bought was for twin beds with a box spring and mattress, not toddler beds. Since we already had the crib converted to a toddler bed, we decided to let her sleep in it and see what happened. We laid our heavy down comforter on the floor to pad it in case she rolled out. We couldn't have asked for a better night! We went through our usual bedtime routine and she never got out of bed once nor did she fall out of bed like I'd feared.
Naptime the next day, however, was a nightmare.
Abby still takes two naps a day, and usually goes about 3-3.5 hours between them. When she starts to look tired, we'll ask her if she wants to go "night-night" and if she does, she'll walk into her room and pull on the crib. Not on Sunday, though. The first time I laid her down for a nap went ok, until she came out of her room a minute later. After that, she'd scream as if I was laying her on a bed of hot coals every time I tried to get her back in bed. We tried everything we could think of to get her to nap. We even tried laying on the floor in her room so she'd feel safe. 7 hours later she still hadn't napped and we had stuff to do, so we loaded her in the car to run errands.
She was asleep within minutes.
While out, we picked up a baby gate to put in the doorway with the hope that it would keep her in her room and eventually she'd fall asleep. Bedtime Sunday was just like naptime. The gate didn't work because she tried to climb out (and got stuck at the top like in her crib). I happened to remember something I saw on the Gilmore Girls and it's worked since. See, Abby's crib is a sleigh-style crib with the back being higher than the front. I figured if we flipped the crib around so that she shorter side (or in our case, the open side because we were too lazy to put the rail back on) faced the wall, she wouldn't be able to climb out. Genius! Hopefully, that's bought us a couple months because our only other option is to lock her in her room until she falls asleep.
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1 comment:
Great idea! See, who says TV isn't educational? I am totally dreading this same scenario with Connor. So far we have been lucky that he doesn't climb (knock on wood). A friend of mine has a son who is 22 months and has been climbing up his dresser, their TV armoire and whatever else since he was like 18 months old. He's like a mini Spider Man. Anyway, glad you guys found a temporary solution. I hope it lasts a LONG time!
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