Nap time

For six months, Adelaida has been sleeping in a toddler bed. When we first let her sleep in the toddler bed, we could stand at her door and listen to her crawl out of the bed and start to play during nap time. When we heard that, we immediately opened the door and put her back in bed -- she quickly realized that Momma and Daddy know everything and that she was expected to remain in her bed during nap time. To further discourage her from leaving the bed, we placed two plastic storage bins in front of her bed, across the only opening in the railings. So, although is was technically a toddler bed, she couldn't/didn't get out of it and wasn't able to get into the bed herself.

This worked very well for five months; then about a month ago, she started crawling out of the bed when she was done with her naps or when she woke up in the morning. Because the plastic bins were still in front of the opening of her bed, she crawled over the railing to get out -- and was not able to get back in bed once she was out. Eventually she started crawling out of bed before taking her nap, and we spent several nap times going into Adelaida's room every ten minutes to put her back in bed, knowing that she would be getting out of bed again soon. Eventually, we decided to remove the plastic bins so that, if she did get out of bed, she would at least be able to get back into bed by herself.

The bins were removed about a week ago, and nap times have been very interesting since: we put Adelaida in her bed at nap time, she lays down in the bed and talks for a few minutes, eventually gets out of bed to play, and later (sometimes much later) crawls back in bed for her nap. This is probably the best outcome we could possibly have had -- she plays in her room quietly and happily after we put her down for her nap and knows that she should crawl back in her bed for a nap when she is tired.

Dale put Adelaida to sleep today and listened to her babble and talk and play in her room for a while, then heard her saying "night-night" to different people and things, then silence. He peeked in her room to see if she was in bed or had conked out on the floor, and saw a complete mess in her room:


Adelaida had pulled out every hat, every coat, every stuffed animal, and even an empty shoebox and strewn them across the floor of her room! She had also managed to remove one shoe and one sock, but had apparently had sense enough to climb into her bed to sleep.

Doesn't she look exhausted? Removing every article below two feet high in her room must have been hard work!