The Toddler Bed

Thanks to the generosity of friends of ours we met through autocrossing (and our willingness to help them empty their basement - ha ha), we have acquired a toddler bed in the shape of a VW bug, with sunroof!. The link I've posted is to a review site that has a picture because the bed is no longer sold by Step 2, so I can't get an original picture. To gauge its size, the best thing I can tell you is that it's designed to fit a crib mattress.

It's been in DJ's room since early March, and DJ has been very interested in it. "DJ car?" He likes to sit in it to read books and climbs in and out of it regularly. But since we only have one mattress, he can't lay down in it without our taking the mattress out of his crib.

However, we've noticed that DJ has been thinking about climbing out of his crib, though he hasn't done it yet. Thus, we decided to try having DJ nap in it on Saturday.

First, we re-toddler-proofed his room. Second, we let him play in his room and get used to being able to lay down in the car, stick his head out the "sunroof" which led to an incident of bumping his chin on the sunroof while "jumping on the bed, and generally crawl around and get the novelty of it out. Then we made sure he was tired. At that point, I took him into his room, laid him down on the bed, gave him his blanket, Binky, Tiger, and a book. I laid down on the floor next to him, and hoped he'd follow my lead.

Yeah, no. Who was I kidding?

After 10 minutes of DJ trying to play hide and seek with me, I had to lay down on him, for all intents and purposes. He was laying on his belly, so I put my arms across the backs of his thighs and my head on his back. He settled down, and soon enough, he was asleep. He had a really good nap - 3 hours!

That night, we tried putting him to sleep in the toddler bed again. After reading books with Daddy, he laid down in the bed, blanket over him, with Tiger, a book, and Binky. As we shut the door, he was still laying there. We turned to each other, and crossed our fingers...

It wasn't 5 minutes later that we heard, "Daddy? Nat-na?" (Daddy open?) just inside his door. Yeah, it would figure. Upon investigation, Daddy found that DJ had not only gotten out of the bed, but had also tossed Binky into the storage box on his dresser, and was ready to play. So we let him come back into the living room to play for 5 minutes with Yiayia and Papou (they had come over for dinner) while we switched the crib and the toddler bed, say ni-ta-ta again to everyone again, and we put him in his crib. From what we can tell, he fell right to sleep.

Although his nap on Saturday proved that he could sleep in the toddler bed without falling out, we're thinking he still likes the security of his crib. And that buys us more time with him in the crib. Everyone who has had kids has told us to keep them in the crib as long as possible, and the experience on Saturday proved how sage that advice is!!!