About half a dozen or so times throughout the last few weeks, Lydia has climbed out of her cot. This would be after removing her sleeping bag – having worked out the only style we could find that she couldn’t remove herself… until now.
Once or twice, she’s even removed her bag, climbed out of her cot (*thunk*) and then stood on a shelf or moved something to the door & stood on it, to open the bedroom door.
So, at 19 months, Lydia needed to be moved out of a cot.
We didn’t want to pay for another toddler bed when we are going to be putting them in bunk beds when Georgie is ready for a top bunk, so instead we have removed the side from her cot. It isn’t actually a cot bed or meant to be convertible, so it took some sawing, sanding & screwing to turn her cot into a sort-of-bed! The cot got damaged in a few places when we moved house so we weren’t too bothered about making permanent changes to it; we’ve had it since before Georgie was born now and weren’t planning to pass it on to anyone given the damage.
When we went to Ikea on Saturday we let Lydia choose some duvet cover sets, and picked up a dinky cot pillow & duvet from their range for her to use now that she has beaten every type of sleeping bag there is. She got really excited and happy about it in the shop, and when we brought her upstairs to see the bed on Sunday afternoon all made up she was thrilled. She ran straight to it and climbed on, cuddling her toys and then tucking herself in with a massive grin on her face, saying “Bed! Bed! Bed” over and over.
Her first naptime on Sunday went ok; she climbed in and out for a while and played a little, before finally climbing in and going to sleep. Bedtime was even easier as Georgie was there to tuck her back in if she dropped the duvet, and tell her to “go back to bed, darling. Lie down. Go to sleep, darling.”
Monday afternoon, for her second nap, she was so exhausted that she made no fuss and just lay down and slept. She wriggled a bit and lost the duvet over the side, but slept for around four hours. At bedtime I tucked the duvet in down the side and it seemed to stop her dropping it again.
So, that’s two naptimes and two bedtimes in her slightly bodged bed. Pretty successful transition so far, I’d say!
It feels really soon to be moving her into a bed but at the end of the day it’s a safety issue and that is what is important here. She was using her upper body strength to get a leg up and over the bars of her cot, not climbing on her soft toy collection, so it’s not like we could have done anything to prevent her climbing out anymore.
P2 is underneath her sisters high sleeper on a mattress on the floor. Bodged bed!
Awwww she looks so happy 🙂