New Found Freedom

Ben almost a month ago, discovered he could climb out of his crib. Then he never did it again. Until yesterday. Let's all Mark yesterday as the day Ben refused to stay in his crib. He's not quite 20 months old. I feel like he's too little for a toddler bed.

At nap time I put him to bed and said "Night Night Ben," and before I even turned around he had popped up and had his leg over the crib rail. He gave me that smile that he does when he knows he's being a mess and should do something really cute to win me over. The smile is the one where he crinkles his nose and tilts his head back a little and grins so big. It's often accompanied by a giggle. Can you say ornery? Sheesh. So, I took him, and laid him down again, thinking that would be that.

That was certainly not that. Five minutes later down comes Ben. I scooped him up and carried him up the stairs again. He went to sleep that time, but instead of fussing when he woke up, he just got out of bed.

Then bedtime, oh bedtime. Ben's always been easy to go to sleep. I give him his bottle of water (I know, he's way too big for a bottle, but he just gets the bottle of water at bedtime. I had planned to wean him from it soon, before this whole climbing out of bed thing sprung up) and he sleeps. This time, I put him down, he seemed to be staying, but before I got downstairs he was up. He takes great joy in his new found freedom. I decided to just stay upstairs and make it know he must stay in bed. It took 40 minutes of hard work, putting him back in loads of times. I didn't count but it was at least 15 times. When I decided I needed to keep him from climbing out, I put my hand on the area he was climbing out of and he pulled, pushed and tried with all his might to move me out of his way. I fought back my laughter at this indignant little creature trying to escape his night time prison.

He did finally go to sleep, until about 5 AM when he climbed out and bumped his head. No major injuries, thank goodness, but I've clearly got to make a decision here. I'm going to try a crib tent even though I hate the idea of it. My suspicion is Ben will figure out how to get it off, but we'll see. In the event the crib tent doesn't work, I guess it's time for a toddler bed. I'm really not ready for this.