Big(ger) Girl

I’m glad we had gotten Samantha a toddler bed a year and a half ago. I really am. I know people always say they prefer to skip the toddler bed and go right to the twin, but Sammi wasn’t very good at climbing a year and a half ago, and would never have been able to hoist herself up over mattress and box spring. Plus I was too scared of her falling when trying to get down. I know a twin bed isn’t all that big, but still, when you’re talking about the little princess that you wrap in cotton wool every day, it may as well be the giant mountain of mattresses accessible only by ladder in The Princess and the Pea. And we know Sammi couldn’t climb ladders then, either.

So the toddler bed was a wonderful introduction to life outside the crib. The freedom has been liberating for her, but she has never really taken advantage (in a negative way) of the opportunities it presents. She generally knows that bedtime is bedtime, naptime is naptime. Playtime is for when you’re awake, and supposed to be awake. Sure, I’ve done my share of sneaking up the stairs to surprise her, mid-stride, in the middle of her room trying to hightail it back to bed before I discovered her little adventures. I’ve caught her cross-legged on the floor engrossed in a pile of books in pitch dark. (Now she knows how to turn her light switch on, so that won’t be a problem for her anymore…)

There were two big drawbacks to the toddler bed, however. One, she still fell out of bed during the night. Because the base below the mattress was slats, we couldn’t install a side rail. The side rails built into the bed already were barely longer than her pillow. How those could do anything beyond keeping her pillow from falling on the floor, I have no idea. She didn’t usually “fall,” exactly, she more often kind of spilled out of bed, starting with one foot, then the other, then her whole body leaning against the side of the bed, then all the way onto the floor, still sound asleep. That couldn’t have been the most restful way to spend the night. I know it wasn’t for me, because I’d be up a dozen times a night to check on her and/or put her back into bed. Two, the fine print on the underside of the toddler bed firmly states that you can’t put weight of more than 50 lbs. on it. That rules out mommy and daddy, in a BIG way. I couldn’t sit on it to read her a story, lie on it when she was sick, etc. Frustrating.

This weekend we decided to retire the toddler bed from use in our house and bought a twin bed from someone on Craigslist. A friend gave us her child’s retired bed rails, and we were all set! Sammi’s room looks so much more like a child’s room now, and I have begun to fill the end of her bed with stuffed animals and books for her to play with when she’s awake. It’s become a whole new play area, and one that I can share with her to read to her in the evenings, dodging errant elbows and narrowly missing head butts. Her quilt fits so much more nicely on it, and best of all, more rest for her and more sleep for me!!!