This past week we survived a momentous change. My two year old had been in a crib in her own room, and my four year old in a toddler bed in her own room. Due to our six month old now needing the crib, we moved the four year old to a new-to-us twin bed, and two year old into her older sister’s toddler bed. Both in the same bedroom. We had been dreading it. But when the time came, the family optimist (me) tried to reassure my husband and myself that it wasn’t going to be so terrible. Just look how much they love each other!
Well, it was terrible. At first. The hardest part was my two year-old’s adjustment to the toddler bed, from a crib that she loved. She never even tried to climb out of it.
The worst was that first night.
We started their bedtime routine at 7:15. We played some of their favorite Youtube videos on our phones (songs from Disney princess movies, black and white clips of 50’s do-wop tunes from American Bandstand, and, without fail, John Deere Green by Joe Diffie) and they danced, twirled, and raced back and forth through the living room. Okay, so the start of the bedtime routine is not very calming or relaxing for anyone, but it is fun.
We followed all the activity with several of their current favorite books (Rooster Can’t Cockadoodle Doo, Winnie the Pooh books, Bears on Wheels) and headed upstairs. We brushed teeth, read devotions, said prayers, and then it was time for both to settle down while my husband sang the bedtime lineup.
Naturally, our sweet two year old could not settle down. She jumped on her bed, threw all her stuffed animals out, pulled off all the bedding, and then went back to jumping. At 8:30, my husband left the room. At 8:40, we heard our tired oldest ordering her sister: “Go to sleep!! Stop jumping and go to sleep!!” At ten to nine our oldest decided there was wisdom in the adage “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” We then had two of them jumping on their beds. We were happy that my good friend had located a very sturdy solid wood bed for my oldest. And the toddler bed…well, it had held up decently for two years; hopefully it would survive a little longer yet.
At 9:15 the jumping noise decreased. Our oldest had fallen asleep. About that time, the fun wore off for her younger sister. By 9:30, she was crying loudly. I went in. I tried to sing to her. She reached out her sweaty hand and pushed at my chin, trying to shut my mouth. So I’m not the singer my husband is, I admit that freely. I tried to shush her quietly, praying that her sister would not wake up from all the racket. She paced from one end of the bed to the other, lying down just for a moment every few laps. I tried to rub her little back or her arms. She would jump up again immediately and stumble back and forth again, screaming.
I left the room, and at 10:10, the screaming stopped. I checked on her. She had fallen asleep with her pajama pants off and her head at the foot of the bed.
“That wasn’t so bad,” I remarked to my husband. We worked on kitchen clean up…then at 10:30 we heard a muffled thump…followed by a long, piercing scream.
Yes, she had fallen out. The railings were up by the head of the bed, so called because normally that is where one lays one’s head. Since she had conked out lying the wrong way, she somehow managed to tumble out.
The next hour and a half occasioned permanent hearing loss as I leaned over the toddler bed and attempted to soothe a two year old in anguish. She was beside herself. Absolutely beside herself. She made her circuit over and over, falling down and hitting her head on the wall or the bed rails at least a dozen times. During the moments that she would lie down, she would draw a breath, then reach out and bat her hand against the wall. Finding no crib slats, she would let loose ear splitting shrieks. Think two year vaccinations times ten. It went on and on.
And our oldest was sleeping through it! That was a prayer answered with a miraculous yes. But I wasn’t in such good shape.
At 11:30, I left and went back into our bedroom, where my husband, whose alarm goes off at 4:45 AM, by the way, was holding the baby. She had not been able to sleep through the din. I shook my head. “I’m ready to wave the white flag. I don’t know if she can do this. I don’t know if I can do this. Maybe I should just dump her in her crib and call it a night.”
“Well, we knew it would be bad,” my husband said. “Though this is worse than I anticipated.”
“Wow, if it’s worse than the family pessimist thought it would be, then we’re really in trouble.”
“Family realist,” he corrected me.
I sighed. “We will try just a little longer. But not much. My nerves can’t take it. And I’d rather not go deaf right now in the prime of my life.”
I went back in there. Twenty more minutes of agony for both of us. And then…she collapsed, completely spent. Asleep.
I stayed a moment by the bed. Her dark blonde curls were plastered against her flushed cheeks. Every few breaths, she let out a soft half sob and her chapped lips trembled. She was beautiful. Achingly beautiful. I never take the time to really look at her, I thought. My beautiful girl had weathered the worst of this transition. We both had. The cuckoo clock downstairs was chiming twelve. As quietly as I could, I pushed a tall plastic bin of summer clothes up against the side of the bed, to ward off any more head-first exits. I covered her with her quilt. And, for the last time, said good night.
