Friday, May 22, 2009

The sibling bed crashes and burns

Last night both Owen and Will were thrilled at the opportunity to try sleeping in Will’s double bed together. Owen agreed in theory to lying still beside Will, and Will knew that he had to model lying still, being quiet and shutting eyes for Owen – but only Will upheld his end of the bargain. Owen was feeling uncontrollably squirrelly and talkative in his big new bed and I kept removing him to the crib until he vowed to lie still with Will, who was patiently feigning near-sleep through it all. Back in Will’s bed, Owen inevitably went back on our deal. (Meanwhile, a couple times when he was in his crib, Owen did his “I get out” trick where he puts one foot on the top crib rail and threatens to climb out – which is what sparked our experiment with the sibling bed in the first place).

Finally after a half-hour crib-to-bed-and-back-again circus, Owen and I both got frustrated and he started crying and finally pointed to his crib in defeat. This time I put a willing Owen in the crib, rubbed his feet for a couple seconds and watched him promptly fall asleep.

If you’d asked me to bet on an outcome for the sibling bed experiment, I would have predicted a high likelihood for this sort of complete failure. But what the heck, it was worth a try. Now we either need a crib tent, a new house with an extra bedroom, or the mixture of parental courage-and-negligence required to just cross our fingers and hope Owen doesn’t actually escape his crib and get hurt in the act.

3 comments:

Grace said...

How about trading in Will's bed for 2 twins? Or getting rid of the crib and getting a toddler bed (pretty cheap at 2nd hand shop). The toddler bed is no bigger than the crib. Good luck!!

Dana said...

Our kids are the 4 and 2 as well and sleep in the same room. They would love to sleep together but there are just too many shenanigans. I started the crib transition by taking one long side off Micah's crib and putting a long ottoman we have beside it in case he rolled out. That was ok except he likes us to sleep beside him and it got uncomfortable for us. Tried the sibling bed thing and they fall asleep fine if one of us is lying between them. It might have worked except Micah turned and pushed Eva out of the bed! So we moved a futon we had into the room and that is Micah's bed.

Annie Addington said...

All good ideas. I can tell now that we're destined for a two-bed scenario of some sort. Just crossing my fingers on the crib while we procrastinate on that one... For now at least it doesn't seem to occur to Owen to try to escape except when he's monkeying around while I'm still in the room before bed. If I'm not in the room he just stands up and cries. So far...