"Big boy" bed!

Ok, a little more catching up to do... A little while ago (obviously pre-haircut) I took the front off of Luke's crib to make it into a "toddler bed". "Look at me in my 'big boy' bed!"

He was so tickled about this new set up and practiced over and over again climbing in and out. Well, climbing in was a piece of cake but climbing back out took a little work before he finally got the hang of it. The funny thing was, he would always go all the way over to the left side to climb in...
...then stand up......and walk all the way over to the right side......before trying to climb down out of the right side.(After watching him struggle to maneuver with his pants in the way, I took them off to make it a little easier for him. Besides, with all the climbing, he was working his way out of them anyway.) As soon as he was down it was right back over to the left side to climb back up again. He did this over and over and over and over and over and... you get the idea. Much to his dismay, I put up a side rail "thingy" before bedtime so he couldn't fall out in the middle of the night. It's quite large and actually meant for a regular bed and it aaaaaaaalmost covers the whole front side, but it is only a few feet tall and much easier for this preggy body to bend over for goodnight kisses and such.

I originally had it centered in the middle with a little gap on each side. One day after a nap, I thought I heard him making different noises than usual before I went in to get him up. I opened the door to his room and guess who had squuueeeeeeeezed through one of the gaps and was now covering the floor with his books? He only did it that one time, but ever since then, I kept having these mommy-fears about him trying to squeeze out and getting wedged in the little gaps and not being able to breathe. So, last week (I think?) I finally moved the guardrail up as far as I could to the head of the bed to make a still-small-but-Luke-sized gap at the foot of his bed. I knew I was possibly putting an end to my lazing in bed on the weekends, catching a few extra zzz's while I listened to him happily chatting and playing in the safty of his "baby cage", but my paranoid mommy brain just couldn't shake the thought of death by guardrail. He had only gotten out of bed once since the change but it was at a decent time and I was already on my way to get him, so everything was fine. Then there was last night.

Hubby and I were watching some Tivo'ed stuff after putting Luke to bed last night, and I kept hearing some noises that didn't seem quite right. We would pause the Tivo and listen, decide it was just his normal moving around and fiddling with things in his bed before falling asleep, and then continue watching our show. Later, when we were heading to bed, I snuck into Luke's room (as I usually do) to re-tuck him in and maybe just take in some of his sweet, snuggly sleepiness before heading off to dreamland myself. As I opened the door, I heard his quiet, slow breathing... and smelled the strong scent of some cleaning/disinfecting wipes I had used in his room earlier?? I wondered why I was smelling them so overwhelmingly, but thought maybe I had forgotten to throw them away and left them on top of his diaper pail or something. I walked across the room and slowly turned up the light dimmer a little to reveal the faint view of my froggie-pajama'ed little man fast asleep, complete with blanket and a few stuffed animals... in the middle of the floor. Over against the wall, I could make out the canister of cleaning wipes and a trail of still attached wipes that our little cherub had pulled and pulled and pulled out, like a pint-sized magician pulling out his string of kerchiefs.

It was so stinkin' cute I had to go get hubby to come and see. I gathered up my sleeping babe and put him back in bed while hubby stuffed the guts back into the wipes container. I'm wishing I could have gotten some pictures, but I'm sure there will be plenty more of this to come. Oh, what trouble we're in when he gets tall enough to reach the doorknobs!