24
January
2007
Tonight we went to IKEA to look for toddler beds. They didn’t have the ones we wanted and it might be a month or more before they get them. Boo. But, we ran the boys all over the store in hopes of tiring them out. That plus the boys not sleeping much the past 2 days (yesterday there was no nap with Drew constantly climbing out of his crib and today we were picking friends up at the airport during their usual naptime, not that they would have napped with their new bed arrangement anyway) I was hoping that we might have a better sleeping night than last night. And we did! Yay! The boys played around in their room for about 45 minutes with only a few cries here and there (probably toy stealing!) and then they fell asleep.
They don’t seem to have figured out that they are supposed to sleep on their mattresses, even though they’ve been using them for the past 20 months. They are using the mattresses as pillows while the rest of their body is on the floor next to it. This evening I went up to help Bran when he woke up crying, he settled quickly, another Yay!. But I noticed the cutest thing, the boys have a shelf with cloth boxes that we have toys and books in, Drew was covered with 2 of them, one on his back and one on his legs! Only Brandon could have done it. 
I guess he was tucking him in. I was so happy with how well they went down. Hopefully it will only get better as they get more used to this new arrangement. Our next challenge is to find 2 new beds. Let’s see how tomorrow goes…
Posted: Drew & Bran
23
January
2007
Well, the boys have finally gone cribless. Drew started climbing out of his bed constantly. He got to the point where he was so good at gettting up and over that he became reckless and had a bad fall. We decided that the beds had to go. We don’t have toddler beds so they had their first night sleeping on their mattresses on the floor. Two and a half hours and lots of crying later (us and them) the boys finally fell asleep. Drew fell asleep right inside the door (he had been standing there crying) so we could barely open it to put him on his mattress when we went to bed. That woke him up and he was up for another 2 hours. We have company coming to visit this week and were expecting to have many nights of game playing, with the boys doing their normal 7:00pm bedtime. Not sure how that’s going to work out…
Posted: Drew & Bran
15
January
2007
The boys had a check-up today. They’re doing just great. I often worry about their language development, but even though they’re behind others, they’re not behind, they’re using most of their energy for physical activity at the moment. Like climbing out of cribs! They understand language really well, and they babble a lot, they just don’t like to say many “words.”
Here’s their stats:
Andrew
Weight: 23lb, 8oz
Height: 32 1/4in
Brandon
Weight: 24lb, 15oz
Height: 32 3/4in
Apparently someone in our family is to blame for Bran’s gigantic feet! He’s size 6.5. Drew’s a 5. I wasn’t surprised to be handing things down between the boys, but I wasn’t quite expecting it to be their shoes, or quite this early.
Posted: Drew & Bran
15
January
2007
Drew has a black eye. The boys were pulling photo albums off of the bookshelf (which they know they’re not allowed to do) and he got cracked under the eye.
Fake Believe:
The other day the boys and I were pretending to eat ice cream cones. A week later we were playing with their pots and pans and feeding each other, and they remembered the ice cream cones and were trying to eat ice cream from my pretend cone. “Fake Believe” is the title of a song from a new CD/DVD the boys got for Christmas. It’s They Might Be Giants, Here Come the ABC’s. It’s an awesome CD/DVD. Mike and I have been going around the house singing the songs, and they’re not annoying. The boys enjoy hearing the music and watching the DVD, and they’re learning lots about their letters.
Funny things:
1. At night when we tuck the boys in we play “Tuck Tuck Goose.” We tuck the boys in saying tuck, tuck, tuck, then tap them on the head for Goose! So now Brandon goes around the house making the sounds for tuck, tuck, Goose! and then throws something. He’ll do it over and over again.
2. Sometimes the boys get to watch a video on my computer, so when I pull out the computer to play music for them, they pull up their chairs. So you might find them sitting in their chairs facing the bookshelf, looking up at the computer which is just playing music!
3. I told you before that Drewie likes to dip things. He really likes to dip chicken nuggets in to sweet and sour sauce, but today he sunk to a new low…drinking the sweet and sour sauce.
4. Sometimes when Drew is playing with his blocks, he’ll stop and look at the last block he put on, say “no”, take it off and put a new one in it’s place!
Posted: Drew & Bran
15
January
2007
We’ve had an exciting week here at our house.
Last Saturday I was talking on the phone to my friend Chloe, telling her that we were thinking the boys may end up needing to be moved to toddler beds around their 2nd birthday. They’re just such climbers that we didn’t think they’d make it much longer. Well… while talking to her on the phone we heard the blinds rustle and then Drew laughing as he slammed the bedroom door shut! “Oh no,” we thought, “it’s already happened!” We went up the stairs to check things out only to find Drew’s bed on the floor. Later we would discover that the boys had locked arms and pulled the bed over! We moved the beds to be end-to-end instead of side-to-side thinking that would end the crib tippings.
After naps on Tuesday I went in to find both mattresses on the floor, clothes strewn everywhere, Bran sitting in the middle of it all… but no bed on the floor. I put him back in to show me what he’d done, but with me standing there able to get him out, he couldn’t quite manage it, nor did I want him to try very hard. (Later that day, on a totally unrelated note, Drew figured out how to open the back door in the middle of a blizzard. He’s been doing that pretty regularly now too, so we’ve been having to keep it locked. Ahhhh! Note: picture me pulling my hair out!
When Mike got home that night we took the boys upstairs to see if Bran would show us what he did and he hopped right out. The height from the mattress to the top of the bars is 22 inches and he’s just over 32 inches. He puts his foot up and over the bar and then pulls himself up until his whole body is straddling the bar then the other leg is over and he jumps down. It’s actually pretty graceful, but sometimes he bangs his chin coming down. So that night we had to figure out what to do. We hadn’t done a ton to child-proof their room since they are never in there unattended. So, we spent the evening adding locks to the two doors that lead to the eaves, covering all the outlets, removing a curtain…
We couldn’t decide what to do about beds, so we researched a bunch of sites to see what other parents have done when their 19 month olds climb out of their cribs. (Drew can’t quite do it, he’s about 3/4 of the way there and gets REALLY frustrated when Bran gets out and he can’t.) We didn’t want to use the pack-n-plays because the sides are the same height, so physically he can do it and we actually want to avoid them learning how to get out of those because we use them when we travel. So we opted to just put the crib bars down: they can get over really easy then without getting hurt. We keep the bar up while they are falling asleep because it’s too hard for them to go to sleep when they can get out so easily. Since we’ve found the time they’re most likely to climb out is after they wake up, we just put the bar down after they’ve gone to sleep, close the door, which they can open about 25% of the time and have a gate in front of the door. So far, it’s been pretty effective. Not sure how long it will last. Eventually we’ll have to move to toddler beds, but right now they fall asleep better when it’s not so easy to get out. We’re open to ideas if anyone has any.
Posted: Drew & Bran
