MOMday: Big Girl Beds

In the last week or so, somehow my daughters suddenly became escape artists!   GONE is their fear of trying something new.  Not that they have ever been particularly shy about trying stuff...they usually prefer to stay pretty close to us.  However - recently we are have been having BIG TIME trouble keeping them in their cribs.

Friday was the last straw.  MIL had been caring for them all day and they kept leaving their cribs, opening their door and then roaming the house.  No downtime for gramma - that's for sure.  We thought that the lack of a nap would spell super tired babies for bedtime.  Um.  Nope.  Enter escape artist part 2.

The night started off ok.  They went right to sleep.  We thought we were in the clear.   But we were wrong.  Around 10pm, Buggie was out of bed and needing snuggles and snacks.  I had a little talk with her about not freaking out when she went back to bed because Doodle needed her sleep.  Of course, Buggie was apparently suffering from post-bedtime deafness because the first thing she did upon being put in her crib was to start yelling her sisters name AND then crawling out of the crib to wake her up.  Before long, two toddlers were roaming the halls.  We'd put them back to bed and two minutes later they would be out and running.

Hubby and I really wanted to just let them be - just keep putting them back in the cribs whenever they escaped - but it was pointless.  They were out as fast as we could put them in.   Finally, it became a safety thing.  We wanted to go to bed and we didn't want to have injured toddlers on our hands when they officially got too tired to climb out with ease.  We were forced to admit that it was time for the toddler beds.

We bought convertible cribs so we just needed to remove the rails and part of the end piece.  Of course, we never saw ourselves doing it when we were exhausted and it was 1:30 in the morning!  This was supposed to be a long weekend project!  It was made all the more difficult by the bouncing, hyper twins that were bouncing off the walls as we did it (and we needed to contain them in the same room so they wouldn't wake Gramma up).   Somehow we did it, though, and before long the girls were in big girl beds.  And out of big girl beds.  And being walked back to their big girl beds.  Yeah - it was a fun night.  Even Gramma ended up getting in on the return to bed fun.

Buggie had gotten me up at 3am on Friday so I was completely done by the time I'd been up 24 hours.   I fell into bed...dead apparently.  I didn't even notice that Hubby ended up sleeping on their bedroom floor so they would finally just stay asleep!  Unfortunately, they were up again at 6am.

After my run, I headed out on a mission to buy more childproofing supplies - doorknob covers (no prob finding these), light switch lock (no luck there).  The things we'd need to secure the room until they understood the boundaries.  Hubby sent me a text with cryptic messages about video surveillance systems.   I thought he was joking until he started to send me links to products in the stores I was in.

I ended up bringing home a 2 camera system from Costco - one camera for their room, one for the yard (we have 2 dogs who need monitoring as well).  Hubby went right to work installing it - he'd just endured a much too short naptime with the Big Girl Bed Bandits.   I can't say I blame Gramma's decision to spend that night at a hotel...

After dinner, we took the twins for a walk around the neighbourhood for a) some fresh air to tucker them out and b) to look at "kistmist lights"  Then it was bedtime.  I read a book about Elmo and his big kid bed.   They liked it so much that it was the first thing they headed for after we killed the lights, taped the switch down and closed them into their cell (er, bedroom) for the night.   Off came the tape and on went the lights.

Then there was a bit of this for a while:






We went up a few times to try to devise solutions to our light switch issues (I'm still seeking DIY tips if anyone has any for securing the switches off - hubby finally just took the bulbs out)

But, I am happy to report that they were asleep just over an hour after we put them to bed.  Not too bad for the first night in the big girl beds.

From the monitor:

Later, Hubby was talking to a former coworker with twins and she was laughing at us.  Her response to the big kid beds?  A believe the quote went something like this:

"We put them in separate rooms before we attempted big kid beds.  You guys are idiots" (I may have added in the idiots part to embellish a bit. But yeah - that's about how we feel this weekend.

Overall that first full night went well. They were up at 2am again and hubby slept on the floor between them for a couple of hours and then they slept til 8.   I'd call that a success.  Here's hoping it continues to improve.   Maybe I'll keep them after all...