A New Milestone: The Big Kid Bed

As Christian approaches the Big Three, we've been pondering getting him a "big kid bed." While he didn't mind the shrinking confines of his crib, it was obvious that his days in the crib were numbered.

We checked out a couple of furniture stores a couple of weekends ago, but didn't really see anything. So we looked at IKEA on Sunday and VOILA! Christian now has a new bed.

We weren't too sure what he'd think of the new bed, but he didn't really care. I bought him "Cars" sheets, and he was pretty excited about them (which, I later learned, might be a problem since it keeps the movie active in his mind and he wants to watch the movie as soon as he wakes up!).

The first night in his bed (Sunday) was a few hours after returning from our Scottsdale resort adventure, and he'd only had a short nap in the car ... so he was exhausted. I laid down in the bed with him and told him we'd practice pulling the covers up (he loves getting "under the cubbers" in our bed). To our amazement, he slept through the night without incident. We chalked it up to fatigue.

The next day (yesterday) we waited for the real challenge: nap time. Christian still goes down for about four hours after daycare each day. Some days he gets really upset when I put him in his crib and walk out, closing the door behind me. Occasionally he's so angry about it the bangs his head on the wall. It's actually quite comical: I hear a loud bang and then a quiet, "Oww ..." I was prepared for the worst yesterday, but it didn't happen. I shut the door behind me and he stayed in his bed. Took him a while to go to sleep (as it often does), but he stayed in his bed.

This morning (day three), I heard he was awake and went in to get him. He was just sitting up in his bed waiting for me to come in. Surely he know he can easily get down onto the floor, if he'd like. He was doing it the first day the bed was set up. But he's used to having to wait until somebody gets him before he can get out. We'll see how long that lasts!

And right now, he's napping again. He never got out of his bed after I put him down, as far as I can tell.

We've seen enough episodes of "Super Nanny" to know that bedtime can become challenging. But for now, we're just thankful that the transition is going so smoothly!