Saturday, February 03, 2007

The Toddler Bed



During nap time yesterday, all was quiet, I thought Emmalee was sleeping and suddenly... THUMP! 'WAAHHH!' Emmalee climbed out of her crib and fell to the floor! This was the first time. She wasn't much of a climber until recently, but I seriously thought we had another month of two before needing to convert the bed. She's fine though, she has a red mark on her forehead but that's it. So last night when Tylor came home I had him get straight to work converting the crib into a toddler bed. I was scared at first, thinking this is just going to be more on my plate to deal with, supposing she will constantly be climbing right out of bed to play or come out of her room and look for us. But so far so good! She continues to surprise me! However, she fell out of her bed at some point last night, she slept through it, and rolled underneath the twin sized bed in her room. When she woke up this morning, Tylor found her stuck under the twin size bed crying. So I rearranged her room a bit today, and have laid a couple of blankets on the floor right in front of her toddler bed so if she falls off, she will still have a comfortable place to sleep, and nothing around her to bump into or get stuck under.

Today, I was surprised again. She stayed in her toddler bed at nap time. Until she woke up, that is. She woke up, opened her bedroom door, came to the stairs and called for me. No crying or anything, in fact, she seemed a bit proud of herself. She said something about 'getting out of bed'. We're hoping she'll do the same thing tomorrow morning, just wake up and climb into bed with us. We'll make sure the gate is locked so she doesn't tumble downstairs for a bowl of cereal.


Off the topic.. I have an update regarding our preschool situation. The director told me that I had to make a choice between working there FULL-time, or having my hours cut in half. I gladly accepted my hours being cut. So now we just go in Monday through Friday from 3 to 6pm. I think this will be a good balance for Emmalee, for our household, for my marriage and for my sanity. I truly don't believe it is the right place for Emmalee to be for long periods of time. Perhaps if there were less kids in her class I would feel more comfortable, but I think she deserves more than being one out of a class of 16 toddlers. :-( There's no feasible way she could be getting the one-on-one attention she needs. The teachers don't have enough time to build a very responsive, nurturing relationship with each child with such a high number of children. She still sees them as being 'strangers' and I think it will take more time for her to get to know them. A good thing; towards the end of our three hours, if she gets sad, they bring her over to my classroom, and I love that! So I will just have to find some other creative way to make up for the lost income.

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