Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Of cribs and beds

After they spent three weeks of sleeping on beds without bars, we decided Mia and Aidyn were ready to move out of their cribs and into tiny beds.

Since then, we've questioned this decision.

Bedtime stretches from 8 to 8:30 and there's screaming involved: "AIDYN, go back to bed!" "MIA, what is WRONG?! Lay down and go to sleep!" Nobody wants to go to bed in the new bed.

The first night, Aidyn cried out at 2 am. I found him standing between his bed and the wall, screaming at the giraffe he couldn't see. Mia I almost stepped on trying to get to Aidyn. She had fallen out of her bed and not waken up, just continued to sleep on the floor between the beds. I felt terrible.

The past two nights have been the same story: Aidyn cries, Mia's on the floor sleeping. Aidyn does not want to sleep in this "new" (it's the same bed, just without the crib slats) bed when he wakes in the night, Mia does not want to go to sleep in the evening. (This may also be because it is pretty much daytime here at 8 pm when they are scheduled to go to sleep. Nighttime in Colorado looks different... Not to mention that we didn't exactly enforce the 8 pm bedtime on vacation.)

I hope they will get used to the new beds. Soon.

Looking back, I realize we did the same thing to ChloƩ: we returned from vacation and less than a month later we put her in her own room. New experiences, jet lag and insecurity issues be damned. Bad parents.

I don't know, maybe living through all the change, we feel inspired to change as much as we can. Take it to the limit. Live on the edge. Take charge of something in the chaos.

I'm sure they'll get through it, with a little time. My kids are trained at adapting to change. I do it to them everyday.

In the meantime, I'm practicing not sleeping. Again.

1 comment:

Linz said...

Love the title. Love the way you paint the picture. Good luck with this!