No Sleep for Us ... The Crib is Gone!

After a couple of days of Sasha scaling the outside of his crib to break free from its confines, we decided, sadly that the crib days are over. With great reluctance, we took down the front of his crib tonight converting it into a toddler bed. We flipped over his tattered baby mattress (did I mention that he shredded his water proof mattress cover and his mattress .. and no, we don't allow him to carry a pocket knife yet. He did this with just his little hands, teeth, etc. Shredded, big holes, crazy and we have no idea how he did it. Perhaps we don't want to know.) and added a sheet and big boy pillow to his ensemble.

We went to Target earlier to purchase a guard to add to his bed (on a side admission, it may surprise you to know that I never had a safety rail on my bed. I don't ever remember falling out of bed - not even once, and can't remember any friends or family talking about such an event happening to them either. And, now this is a big shocker - we didn't have ANY electric outlet covers! I know this is crazy but I never stuck my fingers in a socket either. I also don't remember hearing about any unfortunate electricution occurrences to friends or family when I was growing up. So, were there so many safety issues with children when I was growing up that it warrented corner protectors on every sharp object in my house (seriously, they sell plastic covers to go over every hard corner in your house)? How come I never heard about these life threatening situations? Were my obviously accident-prone friends the reason why parents are having to cover their homes in bubble wrap to keep their children safe? Are we raising a population of children that are more accident prone than the ones of the past? Can that somehow be blamed on the added chemicals in food and milk? Pollution? Global warming?)

As Sasha is climbing proudly into his new 'big boy bed', we discover that neither of us has assembled the bed guard. Lord ... this thing is more complex than the crib assembly (I think there is a mint to be made on 'no assembly required' childrens' items. I assure you as a parent of a toddler, we just don't have the mental skills, patience or time to sit and pour over a 30 page guide at the end of the day.) Sitting on the floor, in a sea of white 'bits' that are meant to create this guard we realize that we have two 'extra' bits that Nathan assures me just aren't needed. I guess they were thrown in just to confuse us or as a bonus gift. Finally, we got the guard assembled and installed. Installed we realize that it's as big as the bed which leads us to wonder why we bothered moving him to a big boy bed in the first place. Perhaps this will allow us to sleep soundly for a couple more days until he figures out how to escape from this as well. On second thought, he'll be out of this setup before we get back to our room.