Adventures in a Big Boy Bed

The big news of the week is that James is now sleeping in a big boy bed. I thought that since there are going to be a lot of changes in his life this year (new brother, new house) that we should probably get him used to this change in plenty of time for the next. Well, the transition has been ridiculously easy. We took the crib apart while he was still trying to climb all over it. Then, we took it upstairs (mostly I mean Kendal did) and brought down the twin mattress. He loved it immediately. He was climbing all over it, jumping up and down, and generally causing a ruckus. I had a hard time getting him off long enough to make it up. We haven’t got him to lay down and go to sleep by himself yet; he likes that his new bed is big enough for mom and dad to keep him company. If we leave right away he just gets up and follows us. So far it takes about one story and five minutes of pretending to be asleep before we can sneak out successfully.

I, on the other hand have had to adjust to the change. The first night he kept rolling over and hitting the wall. Since I sleep right on the other side of the wall the noise would startle me awake and I would be waiting for him to toddle in to see me. He never did. I remedied this by putting a pillow between him and the wall. I know, I am incredibly resourceful. This morning however, he snuck up on me from behind, and that startled me awake too. It is going to take some time for me to get used to him being mobile at all times of the night now.

James is going through a destructo phase at the moment. He likes to dump all of his toys out of their containers and spread them all over the room. Note the word “spread.” Yesterday he dumped out all of his toy animals and threw them all over the room. Then he dumped out the box of balls and rolled them all over the room. He likes even distribution. It is like he is decorating with sprinkles. It is not like he wants easy access to the toys either. He mostly ignores them once they’re out. He also likes to take his toys apart. Grandma Trudy gave him a xylophone for Christmas. While Paige and Peter (his cousins) like to bang on it as loud as they can, he likes to take off all of the metal bars and stash them around the room. Yesterday, he brought me PART of a wooden horse and made a frustrated sound because he couldn’t finish dismembering it by himself. Yeah, that’s my kid.