January
2007
Is This Life With Two Boys? Part 2
We’ve had an exciting week here at our house.
Last Saturday I was talking on the phone to my friend Chloe, telling her that we were thinking the boys may end up needing to be moved to toddler beds around their 2nd birthday. They’re just such climbers that we didn’t think they’d make it much longer. Well… while talking to her on the phone we heard the blinds rustle and then Drew laughing as he slammed the bedroom door shut! “Oh no,” we thought, “it’s already happened!” We went up the stairs to check things out only to find Drew’s bed on the floor. Later we would discover that the boys had locked arms and pulled the bed over! We moved the beds to be end-to-end instead of side-to-side thinking that would end the crib tippings.
After naps on Tuesday I went in to find both mattresses on the floor, clothes strewn everywhere, Bran sitting in the middle of it all… but no bed on the floor. I put him back in to show me what he’d done, but with me standing there able to get him out, he couldn’t quite manage it, nor did I want him to try very hard. (Later that day, on a totally unrelated note, Drew figured out how to open the back door in the middle of a blizzard. He’s been doing that pretty regularly now too, so we’ve been having to keep it locked. Ahhhh! 
Note: picture me pulling my hair out!
When Mike got home that night we took the boys upstairs to see if Bran would show us what he did and he hopped right out. The height from the mattress to the top of the bars is 22 inches and he’s just over 32 inches. He puts his foot up and over the bar and then pulls himself up until his whole body is straddling the bar then the other leg is over and he jumps down. It’s actually pretty graceful, but sometimes he bangs his chin coming down. So that night we had to figure out what to do. We hadn’t done a ton to child-proof their room since they are never in there unattended. So, we spent the evening adding locks to the two doors that lead to the eaves, covering all the outlets, removing a curtain…
We couldn’t decide what to do about beds, so we researched a bunch of sites to see what other parents have done when their 19 month olds climb out of their cribs. (Drew can’t quite do it, he’s about 3/4 of the way there and gets REALLY frustrated when Bran gets out and he can’t.) We didn’t want to use the pack-n-plays because the sides are the same height, so physically he can do it and we actually want to avoid them learning how to get out of those because we use them when we travel. So we opted to just put the crib bars down: they can get over really easy then without getting hurt. We keep the bar up while they are falling asleep because it’s too hard for them to go to sleep when they can get out so easily. Since we’ve found the time they’re most likely to climb out is after they wake up, we just put the bar down after they’ve gone to sleep, close the door, which they can open about 25% of the time and have a gate in front of the door. So far, it’s been pretty effective. Not sure how long it will last. Eventually we’ll have to move to toddler beds, but right now they fall asleep better when it’s not so easy to get out. We’re open to ideas if anyone has any.
