I haven't written in almost two months. We have been a family in transition - giving up our house in suburban Sacramento to move onto six acres in the Sierra Nevada mountains - to a tiny town called Colfax. This transition in itself is a big one for our family (and full of plans and dreams), but it was complicated by the fact that we were finishing the house in the mountains to make it inhabitable - it needed a kitchen, flooring, and a bathroom finished to name the biggest projects. So in between kids' activities, making the hour drive to work on the house in every spare minute, packing to move, plus my job mid-semester, it has been crazy to say the least. The fiasco of preparing the house and moving deserves its own blog entry, and perhaps one day I will do that, but for now we are finally settled in - well as much as we can be - and back to the normal crazy that is our life.
In case you haven't yet figured it out, the great transition does not actually refer to this life changing move. The great transition is the time in every developing child's life when they learn to climb out of the crib. I like to believe that there are parents out there that view this time with nostalgia and introspection about their child no longer being a baby. Perhaps there are parents who actually view the day their toddler toddles into their bedroom at five in the morning to wake them as a good thing. As a welcome surprise. I happen to think these parents are fictional or at the very least naive - since they have no idea the torture that a two year old who is no longer trapped in his bed can cause.
So Ellis can climb out of his crib. Since this is my third child, we have learned to try to keep them in the crib until they are close to three as possible, so the first time he appeared outside the crib, I tried to believe it was a fluke. It wasn't. Even though the crib mattress is so low the rail comes to his chin, he has learned to shimmy up the side like a little monkey. The first night we must have put him back in bed 37 times and it was at least midnight before he gave up and fell asleep. For an entire week, we tried to keep him in the crib, and we were even thrilled when we got him to sleep by 10:30 (his normal bedtime is 8pm).
However, we soon realized this battle was futile and thought perhaps we should transition him into a "big boy" bed, so we set up the bunk beds, put a rail on the edge of the bed, and a gate on the door. All the precautions that experience with two other toddler boys told us we would need to conquer the I-just-discovered-I-can-get-out-of-my-bed-whenever-I-want-to two year old. We were fooled. Ellis is much smarter than we. Just as we have learned some tricks through the experiences of parenting his brothers, he too must have learned some tricks from his brothers' experiences (at least that is the only thing I like to believe).
So he gets up - but he doesn't leave his room or make any noise. He just shuts his door, turns on his light, tries to turn on the TV or music, and plays with his toys: until MIDNIGHT when I get up to go to the bathroom and see the light on and discover his misdeeds. This happens two or three nights in a row until I learn to unplug all of the appliances including the light (luckily Emmett is a heavy sleeper and slumbers away on the top bunk while all this fun is happening). So I think I have finally won - I took the toys out of the room too, so he couldn't possibly have anything to do, right? Wrong.
Never underestimate a crafty two year old. This morning I went in there to discover he had peeled the wallies off the wall (that my husband had just hung two days ago) which meant he had to climb on TOP of the turtle cage to reach them. He also managed to pull down the curtains, knock down the radio and all of the books and other items off the shelf. It was utter chaos. Ellis, however, was sound asleep on the TOP bunk next to his brother.
I think it is safe to say he has won. And I hate the great transition from baby to big boy.
