"She is two years old, she goes in there with her iphone and we don't hear a lot of freaking out, maybe some grumbling a little while later. She NEVER tries to climb out or anything. Honestly, I think she will just stay in there and wait for us to come get her when she gets up. I just want to test the waters. It would be cute if she slept in the toddler bed."
I was so so so wrong. I have rarely been more wrong than I was here. There will probably be urban myths about my wrongness for generations to come.
There were a couple of warning signs that really should have made me think to myself, "STOP! Stop this madness!! Reverse course! Reverse course, good madame!!"
Firstly, the toddler conversion of their cribs is WAAAAY too high for a toddler bed. In order for the conversion to fit securely the mattress must be in the middle position, not the lowest. So when the mattress is in place, the top of the mattress is level with her neck. That's way too freakin' high for a toddler bed. I did second guess this but I thought, "Heck, she doesn't move hardly at all while she sleeps so its HIGHLY UNLIKELY she would fall out." Mmhmm. Hear that? That's God laughing at me.
The second clear warning sign was nap time. Annecy has some "special" (read ridiculous) sleep phases. For a month or more she will sleep pretty normally. Go to bed with very little crying, sleep through the night etc. However, such bliss always ends and she reverts into a phase where she doesn't sleep. She can't fall asleep, she gets herself so worked up in her crib that she pukes all over and eventually all hope is lost, she stays up and falls asleep with Eric and/or myself at like 10 or 11. If she goes back in her own bed she wakes up 72,882,727 times. She doesn't nap. She does this because she is a reincarnation of Rosemary's baby, meant to torture all those living with her. Anyway, one of the signs of these phases is how she acts at nap time and on this particular day she made it clear at nap time that she was going into one of these non-sleep phases. My toddler bed transition could not be at a worse moment. Did I take the hint? Nope. Of course not. I convinced myself it would be fine. (Yep, still laughing.)
So, I tried it anyway...
It started off pretty well actually. We put her to bed, she had her iphone, she didn't cry or anything. I went back to work, plugging away for the man. Eric was in the living room watching TV. Then, about 30 min after we put her down, I hear a little whine and a BAM followed by that crazy panic crying. I fly in there (on my broomstick of course) and, just as you previously predicted, she had fallen out of the Mt Everest of toddler beds. She was not hurt at all but obviously it scared the ever-living crap out of her. So, Eric took her in the living room while I finished work. About 10:30 I was done and came out and took her to bed. I put her mattress on the floor and layed her down on top of it and layed beside her. She seemed fine so I got up to go, which made the toddler mattress move like a catapult, which started the waterworks. I walked out anyway and about 3 min later I see this...
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| Sneaking out, not sneaking really because she's bawling. |
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| Disappears behind the wall but there's her blankie trailing behind her |
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| WAAAHHH!! MOOOOMMMM! |
Hahaha. Yeah. By this time she was so upset at the prospect of going to bed that she is flipping out. I told her I'd lay by her until she falls asleep and I got a pillow and blanket which I put on the floor NEXT TO HER MATTRESS.
Then I made the fatal mistake.
I set a bawling toddler on the mattress. The crying turned into panicked shrieks and clawing her way off the bed. I pulled her to my lap and that's where the vomiting began. When you are two and you cry REALLY REALLY hard, you puke. And she kept puking...and puking and puking. Since I'm AMAZING, I made her shirt into a bowl and caught a solid 80% of it. It was awesome. Well, it was awesome until Eric and I tried moving her into the bathroom to clean up. Then it leaked, quickly and efficiently leaving a veritable river of vomit from the bedroom to the bathroom. I tossed her in the tub and Eric cleaned up the floor/carpet/blankets/etc. By this time it was about 11:10. I put new pajamas on, brushed her teeth, gave her a drink and gave up. She finally fell asleep about 11:30 in my bed, giving me approximately 6 1/2 inches of space to sleep. Don't worry Fenway got at least two feet.
First chance I got the next day I put her crib back together and vowed to keep them all in cribs til they are in at least first grade.
And hopefully tonight goes better. Seriously, I need hope that tonight will go better.
