April 8th, 2008 - The bagel bed
Last Thursday, Maggie switched to sleeping in a bed–a big girl bed, which when said by a 3 year old sounds an awful lot like bagel bed. This is NOT simple living. Simple was Maggie safely inside a crib with blankets and a few stuffed animals. (Until a month ago, only one plus sometimes a doll, neither of which she played with much anyway.) Occasionally through the years, we learned to not keep things close to the crib as she’d happily pull them inside and tear them apart (the diaper was a big mess!).
But we were lucky. She never tried to climb out and so we could peacefully continue on with her in an enclosed space. Till last Wednesday when Eric went in to say good night after getting home about 10 minutes after she went to bed. He found her sitting on the crib rail swinging her feet. (Reminds me of something I did when I was 16, but that was on a tennis net and Maggie never fell backwards.) Since the bed wasn’t ready and it was late and she was scared enough by Daddy’s reaction, we left her in the crib for night–with lots of pillows on the floor.
Thursday, we dressed the bed. (Okay, for anyone not in my family of origin, that means we put sheets and blankets on the bed.) Everything was pretty peachy until yesterday. She did fall out once, but onto the pillows and apparently never woke up and she seemed quite surprised when Eric got her up in the morning to find herself on the floor.
Then yesterday came. And she figured out that we wouldn’t magically appear if she got out of bed. Most of her toys are on the floor (at least somewhat contained in that corner, but it’s now across 1/4 of the room instead of about 1/8). Many of her diapers, training pants, and wipes were no longer in their containers. (After she went to bed, I discovered why her sweater front was damp. She’d also stuffed a handful of wipes into her front pocket, after apparently using some as tissues.) She also got dressed: over her PJs, she’d put on a turtleneck, sweater, and training pants. I think she tried to put her pants on, but discarded them as they were in the middle of the floor. (Plus she had a shirt on under the PJs. She must have roasted!)
The diapers and such are now in the crib instead of her! Hopefully she can’t reach them, but I’m not convinced. We should probably put them in a box in the crib.
The toys are still strewn about. I had already been thinking that we needed to get rid of more toys and books, and now I’m certain of it. But it’s getting hard to do. It’s not that she’s gotten a lot since the last time I went through them, but since I go through them so often, I’m down to mostly good toys or ones with attachments (such as from Grandma J. or Uncle Monkey). So I’ll probably just box things up this time. Especially some of the younger toys–and get them back out in a couple years. And she has so many books that I can easily box up half and no one will even notice. She doesn’t need board books (although she still enjoys them) so I might put most of those away. Then it will be easier to find the longer books to read to her. She really enjoys some of the early reader books (in particular, her aunt Karen and cousin Summer gave her a number of Henry and Mudge books [We don’t have the one that’s linked, but that’s the first one.]). And I find them easy to read to her. I don’t get bored as quickly with them like I do with board books. (I’m not one of those parents who can read the same board book over and over and over and over. Even the H&M books I have to switch around from one to another.) I’m going to wait till we get back from vacation before tackling it. I have plenty of other things to take care of before we leave.
If we weren’t planning on another baby, I could get rid of the crib, but we’ll just leave it up even if it takes a couple years. Why bother with the work when we can use it for storage? She doesn’t play much in her room (well, not during the day at least!) so it’s not like she needs the space.
One Response to “The bagel bed”
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April 8th, 2008 at 1:40 pm EDT
Oh, if you DO want to get rid of any of the “Uncle Monkey” books — let me know! I’d probably take them all back!