Hellobee

We waited an incredibly long time to move Lion out of his crib and into a toddler bed, in part because he never really tried to climb out. He did attempt it once, then I told him it was dangerous and he never really tried again. Panda, however, began climbing out at 18 months and once he started making jailbreaks, Lion would climb out of his own crib and into Panda’s. Last summer, I did some hand-wringing about how to move them to toddler beds, whether to move Lion first and keep Panda in a crib or to do both at the same time.

Ultimately, we decided to bite the bullet and move both of them to toddler beds (which were really floor beds, which really meant we took their mattresses out of their cribs and put them on the floor) at the same time. Because Panda was the true escape artist, we figured that moving Lion out of his crib would only further incentivize Panda to climb out of his own crib.

We waited until a couple of days after Christmas to make this transition, with me dragging my heels all the way because I was sure this meant the end of Mr. Dolphin and my evenings. Surprisingly, the transition went very smoothly for the first couple of weeks, deteriorated slightly after that, then normalized.

For reference, Lion was 3.5 years old and Panda nearing 2 years when we made this transition. They had been room sharing for 18 months at this point, and we had placed their cribs right next to each other in an L-shaped formation. In the new setup, we kept the same positioning of their beds to minimize the number of transitions, but did make one big change. For Christmas the year prior, Mr. Dolphin’s mom made the kids a teepee and we set it up around Panda’s mattress to create a bit of a privacy wall between the two beds, to try and minimize the playing that they might otherwise do. We went with floor mattresses instead of beds because I was 100% sure that Lion would fall out of a bed. Indeed, he is often halfway off the mattress whenever we check on him during the night.

I don’t, unfortunately, have a picture of the setup of their room before we moved, but here’s the teepee/tent we placed around Panda’s floor mattress.

Panda was thrilled to get a “big boy bed” and even more excited to get to sleep in his tent. For some reason, Panda decided that it was a “rocket ship” and kept saying he was going to go to the moon. For the first two weeks, Panda went to bed without fussing, excited about his new sleeping arrangements. He stayed in his bed all night long and would fall asleep quickly, well before Lion would go to bed (about 20 minutes after we put Panda to bed).

Lion, too, accepted the invisible barriers and stayed in bed. In fact, Lion is still really good about never leaving his bed unless he needs to potty.

After the novelty of the new sleeping arrangements wore off, Panda started leaving his bed and would scream at the bedroom door until we opened it (we used to close the door when we left). I started leaving the door open, and then Panda would wait about two minutes then wander out of the room. For most of the third week after moving them to floor beds, I ended up sitting in the hallway outside their room until they both fell asleep.

Eventually, we told Panda that I would be outside his room, but that he couldn’t leave his bed. If he got out of his bed, I told him I would close the door. He seemed to understand this and stopped getting up when we put him down. He would often yell out to make sure that I was indeed outside and could hear him, but as long as I responded, he felt comfortable.

To keep the kids in their beds in the early morning (they sometimes wake up as early as 5am), we purchased a sleep trainer clock. We have this model and while I don’t love it (it’s a little bright and I think the light bothers them while they’re sleeping), I have to say that the concept is really easy for the kids to understand. Lion kept saying, “If the bunny’s awake, we can wake up. If the bunny’s asleep, then we’re asleep!” Sometimes, it was clear that the kids were awake in their beds talking in the early morning, and then suddenly we’d here shouts, “The bunny’s awake! The bunny’s awake!” followed by the pitter-patter of tiny feet.

We kept the L-shaped setup for about a month, then changed things around a bit, though the kids still shared a room. When we put our house on the market, we got rid of some furniture and moved other furniture around to make the space a bit more appealing. We ended up putting their beds on opposite walls, but across from each other so that they could still see each other. We still kept the “rocket ship” around Panda’s bed because he had grown accustomed to it. The kids didn’t seem to be at all affected by the new setup.

Overall, the transition from cribs went much more smoothly than I anticipated. I feel a little silly with how worried I was, but it all worked out in the end.