Post by Stephanie Noble.
A few weeks ago, I was settling into the couch after putting our almost two year old to bed. I was listening for the squeak of the mattress as the little man did his nightly trampoline routine that he did to wind down at the end of the night. He would generally jump for a few minutes while talking to himself, then go to sleep. I waited for the jumping, but it never came.
Instead, I heard a knock from his door, “Mamma, Daddy, Mamma, Daddy?” Our wee one had jumped out of the protection of his crib straight into the toddler sleep transition.
I went into his room, put him back into his crib and asked him to show me how he got out. He said, “One” and put his first leg over the railing. “Two” brought both legs over and my baby was suddenly dangling over the side of his crib. “Three” he jumped down and yelled “Hurray.”
His latest milestone was not greeted with the same enthusiasm that his previous accomplishments have been met with, so he kept yelling “Hurray” until I finally agreed with him with a hollow, “Yeah.”
We borrowed his cousin’s big boy bed and assembled it. I’m now going to share the parenting secret that nobody filled us in on. “Toddler sleep transition is so much worse than new born sleep deprivation.” Two years ago there was a schedule to the waking up, it was dependable and once the little man was full he’d go back to sleep.
Our toddler wakes up and thinks because he can get out of bed and wander that it must be time to get up and get started with the day.
The past month has seen us readjusting how we live to teach him how to sleep again. Currently, we alternate nights of responsibility so we know that even if we only get four hours of sleep one night, we’ll get a full night the next. That helps, but it’s still hard to go back to being mentally fuzzy most of the time.
When the call comes for parental attention, the responsible parent take the comforter off the bed in our room, throws it down on the floor in our son’s room and then sleep on the floor for the rest of the night with the boy. It’s like camping every other night. A joy at two, aching joints for the over forty crowd.
We decided that the whole camping out thing is getting old and have started looking for a trundle bed. It would be helpful not only during this time of transition, but also when he wants to have friends stay over later on. Everything in a small living space has to pull its multiple duty weight.
I was looking at the Charles P. Rogers website to get some ideas.
Here is my favorite.
I like the Chambord because it looks sturdy and would transition well from toddler to kid. It would also work later on in a library/guest room if we ever live in a bigger space. It also looks a lot more comfy than a comforter on the floor.
