Busting Out of Baby Jail: Surviving the First Weekend with A Free Toddler

Dan and I are pretty lucky when it comes to bedtime with the girls. Granted, Eloise isn't much of a napper, but for the most part, bedtime is usually a breeze. Eloise is usually 75% cashed out when I lay her down, and Annabelle goes right in to her bed with no issues at night. Sometimes, if she's especially tired, Annabelle will even grab our hand before bedtime, and say "Night night?" I kid you not, the kid tells US when she wants to go to bed. There's rarely ever any pushback when we tell her it's time for bed, unless we are staying somewhere where she's not used to sleeping (my sister's for example).

She's been getting more and more restless in the mornings until I go in and get her out of her crib, so we decided it was time to take the side off of the crib. She is pretty good about playing independently, and sometimes in the morning, we'll throw Mickey Mouse or Elmo's World on the iPad for her, so she's got lots of options of things to keep her entertained until I'm ready to get her dressed and head downstairs and off to daycare. We knew it was possibly going to be a disaster, but hoped it would be a smooth transition. The first night without the full crib, we made a big deal to her about her "big girl" bed to get her happy and excited about it, and let her explore it a little bit before throwing her in there to sleep:

She seemed pretty impressed by it, so we thought, "Oooh! So far, so good!" Dan did the usual bedtime routine so she didn't think anything was TOO different. She went down, not shockingly at all, like a dream (no pun intended!). I think it helps that she was pretty tired that night, but however it worked out, we'll take it! We have to shut the door so she doesn't get out of the room on her own in the middle of the night, but before I went to bed, I snuck in to check on her. She was out cold, and stayed that way for the rest of the night!

Her first night was a total success, and she was pretty tired on Saturday at naptime, so she went down super quickly that day, with no realization that she could get out of her crib. Dan and I thought, wow, this is going SO much better than we thought! I think he even asked me how long I thought it would take until she realized that she could get out. I said probably about a week.

I was wrong. So so wrong. By yesterday morning, she had figured out that she could get out of her bed. So much for that lasting a week! Sometimes when she wakes up and wants to get out, she cries this deep, almost guttural cry. It's not super loud, just really deep, like the crying equivalent of a belly laugh. We actually call it a belly cry! I knew our day of her not knowing she could get out of the crib on her own was over on Sunday morning when I could hear her cry distinctly closer than I had ever heard it before. I went to open the door to her room and she was RIGHT THERE. She rushed out and gave me a hug, wiped a tear off of her face like she was trying to pretend she hadn't been crying, and we proceeded to put paci and blankey back in her bed and went downstairs and carried on about our morning as normal.

Naptime yesterday was definitely the biggest struggle we've had since busting Annie out of Baby Jail. After going to church in the morning and tree hunting after that (more on our excursion to the Tree Farm will come later this week!)l, girlfriend was beyond exhausted. But she Would. Not. Sleep. I have never seen her fight sleep so hard. She's normally pretty easygoing, but has a stubborn streak, just like her Mama. At naptime yesterday, that stubborn streak was in full effect. I'm talking crying at the door for 50 MINUTES stubborn. I'm talking laying down at the door, trying to look under the crack and knocking on the door stubborn. From the looks of it, I think we're going to have to put the safety knobs on the door relatively soon...

So, after letting her cry it out for an insane (and dare I say excessive?) amount of time, after I got Ellie down for HER nap (which is an event in an of itself because she HATES napping), I went in and snuggled Annie until she fell asleep in my arms. She was so incredibly tired, that when I did get her to sleep and laid her down, she didn't move. Total dead weight. And she then proceeded to sleep for about 2 hours, so it wasn't a total loss!

Last night, bedtime went totally fine, thank goodness! Maybe it's because it was dark, I'm not sure, but it was a piece of cake! This morning, she was up and moving about a little bit, but not really crying as loudly as the previous morning when she woke up. It wasn't like she WASN'T crying though, let's get that part straight. She just wasn't crying as adamantly. I opened the door (that she was sitting in front of by the way), gave her a hug, and turned on the light. She then proceeded to climb back into bed (who knew?) and asked for Minnie. (For those of you that don't know her speech yet, "Minnie" is used interchangeably for both Minnie AND Mickey Mouse.) And the rest of the morning went pretty normally!

Overall, I'd say the transition out of Baby Jail and into Toddler Bedding went about as smoothly as I expected. I thought it MIGHT have been a bit easier, but I know it could have been far more disastrous. Now let's just hope giving up that paci at naps and bedtime goes the same when we get around to that battle...

#Toddler #ToddlerBed #Sleep