So a couple of weeks ago; out of the blue lil man decided he no longer wanted to stay put in his crib. The first time he climbed out I heard crying at the top of our stairs. I was thinking to myself that R should be in his crib. I walk up the stairs to find him not in his crib. "Oh no" I am thinking to myself. I have been shocked as the months have flown by that my "active" child has not attempted this sooner.
So a week goes by and he never does it again until one saturday morning I wake up to him crying in his room on his floor. So we lowered his crib as low as it could go but that night at 1 am we again woke up to him on the floor crying. The next morning we decided it was best to convert the crib into the toddler bed and go get a bed rail. I had no idea at this point what we had in store. That night when we tried to put him to bed our usually easy going boy turned into what I can describe as a wild banshee. If we left the room he literally was tearing his room apart & throwing everything into his new bed that he obviously didn't like.
After talking to a couple friends I realized this is normal & we had to take some steps to make R feel safe. So for one week we literally sat in his room in a chair or near the door until he was asleep. The weird thing was he could be snoring so we would start to leave and he would suddenly wake up & freak out. Trying to get him to sleep was taking upwards of 3 hours on some nights. My guilt was growing as I felt I was losing my patience. Somedays it is sad that working with middle schoolers eats up all my patience so by the time I get home I have less for my boundary testing toddler. Then when he finally fell asleep we had to figure out what to do when he woke up in the middle of the night and freaked out. We ended up deciding B would sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag when he woke up. Some nights it was 1am, another night 4am and as soon as B would join R in his room he would instantly fall back asleep.
We did this for one week and at this point B wanted to throw in the towel and go buy a crib tent. Sorry hubby, I didn't endure this last week to take a step back. This last tuesday we started operation tough love. We did the same bedtime routine we have created; bath, picking out pj's, 3 books in bed, songs and then kisses. As soon as I went to leave the banshee returned and for one hour R stood at the door crying for "mama" or "dada". At first I went in every 20 mins and put him back in his bed. After doing that twice my sweet savior of a mama friend Hillary told me to stop and leave him be. So he ended up crying about 1 hour that night only to fall asleep on the floor with his pillow pet. I put him back in his bed before I went to bed and that night when he woke up he cried only 5 minutes but went back to his mat on the floor to sleep.
Last night was day 2 of the transition and I expected him to cry for a long period again. Boy was I surprised when he didn't even cry one minute. He did still crawl out of his bed to his mat and brought all of this babies with him.
Tonight was night 3 and he is still crawling to the mat on the floor but is not crying for us. I am so proud of our lil man. I am also proud of us for surviving yet another hard stage to figure out for a first time parent.
I could not survived this last week without the support of my awesome, honest and very supportive mama goddesses! Jana & Hillary, you have your own little ones and busy lives going on but you took time out of your day to get me through this when I didn't think I could. You two literally saved me & my sanity. I hope all mamas have friends like these who can hold them up when they hit a rough patch in mommy hood.
Lil man & his babies on the mat.
Where he choses to sleep and his toddler bed empty in the background.
