Tricks!

The big boy bed transition is going GREAT!! Much better than I had anticipated. I actually think the anticipation was far worse than the actual transition. There were several nights last week when Will woke up in the middle of the night and just needed help getting settled back down. It was usually very easy...just had to convince him that 2am was not exactly the ideal time to play choo choos :) Here are some tips that I think really helped us enter this new phase. Please know that by all means I am NOT an expert on this....Will has only been in his big boy bed for a week. I know we are going to go through other issues. But I also know there are those of you out there who are about to embark on this transition. I read a million articles on google and I don't think any of them really helped, it just made me worry more! Talking to others who had made the transition was much more therapeutic to me. So here goes...

1) We set up Will's big boy bed in the new room at the beginning of January. He had a good 2 months to see it....we talked about it. Explained it to him, etc. We did not tell him that his crib was going to be Alex's bed or his room was turning into Alex's new room. Obviously he will get that once the baby is here.
2) Choo Choo Sheets. Will is obsessed with them. Every night when he gets in bed he talks about them and the first thing he says in the morning is "Mommy sleep big boy bed...train sheets!" We put these on his bed about 2 weeks before he started sleeping in there so he would be excited. Obviously your kid may not be as gung ho about trains as Will is, but just go with whatever they are into.
3) Decor. We bought fun, cool things for Will's big boy room like an airplane lamp and train car book shelves and toy box. He also has a train night light. All of these things made him LOVE his new room. I don't think he has been in the nursery once since we made this transtion.
4) A monitor. We never used a monitor with Will after like the first few weeks because we shared a wall with the nursery and could hear his every move anyway. Plus, I couldn't sleep because I was just listening. But moving him to the front bedroom of the house made this a necessity. He sleeps with a sound machine so it hasn't been hard for us to get used to the monitor (after the first night or two). We contemplated getting a video monitor so we could see him in there....but we really don't want to spend the money on one. I haven't read great reviews on any of them. We can decipher sounds over the audio monitor...like when it sounded like he was right next to the monitor we figured he had slid out of his bed, which he had. We can also hear the door knob if it should open...we tested that out. Anyways, the monitor just gave me peace of mind.
5) After the first 2 nights of going in to check on Will and discovering that he had slid (I say slid because he is in a toddler bed and it is so low to the ground that he can't really "fall") out of bed (which as a side note, phased him not. He was sound asleep on the carpet :) ) we decided that we might should push his toddler bed up against the wall. It is SO much cuter turned out and it makes his whole room look cuter and more pulled together, but we knew it would only need to be temporary so he could get used to being in a bed instead of a crib. Since then, he has not slid out of his bed once. I am hoping after a few months, we can turn it back like it was originally, but for now, it keeps him in bed and sleeping through the whole night, so I'll deal.
5) We taught Will the phrase "out please." We talk every night about how he is not to get out of his big boy bed without calling for one of us and saying "out please." I thought this might turn on us and he might be saying this phrase in the middle of the night, but he has only used it in the morning. And he knows exactly what it means. Sunday morning he slept until 7 and when I heard him saying "Mommy" on the monitor I went in to get him. I opened the door and found him sitting on his bed with his feet on the floor and when he saw me he said "out please!" with the biggest grin. It was adorable. I know those of you with older children are laughing at me right now because you know that sooner than later in my future, Will is probably not going to care about that phrase anymore and roam all over the place if he wants. But for now, it has helped. Even if he is crying, he has only gotten out of his bed once so far. That was during nap on Sunday. We usually miss our window for getting down for a nap easily on Sunday due to church. So he fought his nap for a good 45 minutes yesterday, including not only getting out of his bed without permission, but coming out of the door and standing by the bench until we noticed he was there. We are hoping that the spank spoon and some firm talk will keep this from happening often.
6) This sounds super cheesy, but I think the most important thing is to talk it up and have a good attitude!!! We talked for basically two months about how Will was a big boy and how he was going to have a big boy room with big boy things, including a new, big boy bed. It was like he felt it was an honor or something. I do also think he was "ready." He has never tried once to climb out of his crib, but the weekend before we put him in his new bed, he would go in there at night like he wanted to sleep in there. I know some people will tell you there is a "magic age" for transitioning a child from a crib to a bed. I think every child is different, so as long as you stay positive about it, they probably will too.

For most of you reading, this is totally inapplicable to your life, and so I apologize if you made it to the end. And for others, you have probably already dealt with this with your children and are laughing at me for putting so much thought into this whole transition (and I am probably wishing you had written a blog like this so that it would have helped me :)!!). But for those of you who have kids that you will be transitioning soon, I hope this helps. I know I will probably be so brain dead by the time it is time to transition Alex, that it might be helpful that I wrote these things down. Then again, Will has been so easy through most of the big transitions that Alex will probably be my hellion and I will have to throw all of these tips out the window!

I am going to try to post pictures of the big boy room tonight-I think it turned out absolutely adorable!