fanny
We’ve transitioned Ethan from his crib to a regular bed this month. Honestly, we didn’t expect it would happen that soon, because one, we are lazy; two, he didn’t seem to care to climb out of the crib; three, our first attempt almost turned us into zombies as both his father and I took turns to get up and take him back to his room 70 times in the middle of every night. And most importantly, when we ran out of energy to handle his sickening tantrums, we would just throw him in his crib, let the animal inside his body tear its way out and fight with himself behind bars. So why did we make that stupid transition as apparently we needed that damn crib more than he ever did?
There was one Saturday after we came back from grocery shopping, aka “a crazy mom chases his son in a grocery store and whips him with a long slab of raw pork ribs”. As usual, we put him down in his crib for an afternoon nap, so we could collect ourselves before he woke up for another round of bout in the evening. Sometimes he would cry for us to come back after we left his room and closed the door, as if a prisoner being put back to his cell requesting for one last puff of cigarette, which we rarely paid attention to. But this time he was so silent that we thought he might be pretty exhausted as we were. So, we relievedly headed back to the kitchen to allocate the grocery. As Matt and I were standing beside the kitchen counter chatting, in a blink of the eye, HE BREEZED IN STANDING BETWEEN US AND LOOKED UP WITH A MISCHIEVOUS SMILE! Blink…Blink, blink…We lifted up our heads seeing a big question mark smoking out of it. Matt’s astonishing face confirmed that what appeared in front of me was real — without any sound, Ethan flew out of his crib and landed peacefully like a feather right next to me. At that split second, we broke the awkward moment of silence with a fit of laughter – loud, coarse, hard laughter, so spontaneous and unstoppable that we had ever laughed since long time ago. We ran to check out his room, only saw an articulate scene of “prison break” – his pillow and blanket spread out on floor to cushion his fall, although Elmo was lying face down, probably dead.
Yes, he did climb table, kitchen counter, and he broke his arm jumping off the couch. However, we still thought he wouldn’t ever been that physical, hadn’t ever understood the need to go exploring that like. And again, we are dumb. All along he had been planning this trait, which I’m sure he was practicing over and over again until he ran out of bones to crack. That left us with no choice but an urge to remove the side bar of his crib right away. And all we were thinking about that evening was how many times that he got out from his bed should we be tolerating before we chain him up. The first week we made the change, he didn’t fall asleep in his bed right away, he would get up and play with EVERYTHING in his room. When we walked into his room, what we saw was the most powerful explanation of gravity, because the only thing NOT on the floor was the ceiling lamp. However, he has taken this transition far better than we ever imagined he would. Unless he poops your diaper, otherwise he never tries to open the door and come out of his room. Sometimes after a short span of toy banging, he will go completely quiet that we assume he’s gone asleep. And we wouldn’t take a chance to go in his room and check up on him, because he is such a notoriously light sleeper. He will wake up if he hears a tree growing.
Just like that, we passed the intense experiment, and decided to buy him a regular bed. Instead of a toddle bed with adjustable length, we bought him a twin sized bed. The other day when we were getting him ready for bed, his father looked at his new bed wondering if one day he will bring a girl home and make out on it. My response was, “Ideally he will sleep in this bed until he moves out, which will be the day he’s done tolerating us as his parents. Probably before he turns five.”