I am a man of great planning and foresight. By that, I mean
I am none of those things. Now, I know you're trying valiantly to convince me
that can't be true.
"Oh Jesse, you are clearly one of the great planners
and foresighters of the 21st century."
That's very nice of you to say and all but I have to correct
that sentence for a couple of reasons. Those being the fact that it's not true
and 'foresighters' is not a word. Good work on getting the century correct
though.
In all seriousness, did you have any idea that today marked
(what I believe to be) the 365th day of me staying home with Ellie? While Ellie
is well over a year old, remember that I'm just counting the days in which I
serve as Ellie's primary caregiver towards that total. I definitely can't count
weekends as the sweet baby generally won't have anything to do with me.
So, in honor of Day 365, I decided to postpone the story
that I had gotten a good start on until tomorrow and instead focus on an
Ellie-centric story.
Flashback to Friday at naptime. The only problem is that Ellie
found herself not wanting to take a nap. Regardless, I laid her down in her
crib and leave the room as quickly as possible to a cacophony of screams behind
me. Once the door closed behind me, I breathed a sigh of relief knowing that
she'll only cry for a few minutes before going to sleep. It just so happens
that I was wrong about that.
Less than five minutes after laying Ellie down, I heard a
massive bang followed by more intense screaming. Although my first reaction was
to quickly bound up the stairs, I instead chose to wait. My thought process for
that being that Ellie had likely been jumping up and down in the crib in her
anger and lost her footing, falling into the side of the crib. About that time,
I hear the unmistakable sound of pounding on a door.
At that, I hustled up the stairs and opened the bedroom door
to find Ellie standing there, holding her arms out for me to pick her up. In
all of her anger and panic, I'm guessing she had scaled over the rails of the
crib and dropped to the ground below. At
first, I found myself figuring it was a fluke situation, but I was honestly
afraid to place her back in her crib since I didn't want my daughter to hurt
herself. Instead, I decided to let Future Jesse deal with the issue and allowed
Ellie to nap on my chest.
Fast forward to Saturday. Obviously, I had shared the events
of the prior day with Bethany but we both decided to chalk it up to being a
fluke. Honestly, neither of us probably wanted to admit that our sweet little
girl was growing up and becoming capable of things like escaping her crib. Before
we knew it, it was naptime. Bethany took the initiative on this occasion to
deliver Ellie to her crib, marching to the beat of baby screams all the way. As
she laid Ellie down and closed the door, I already knew this wasn't going to
work out for us.
Within three minutes, we would hear the unmistakable sound
of Ellie dropping to the floor followed by her attempts to break down her bedroom
door with all of her might. Thus begins again the futile attempts to put Ellie
down for a nap again before Bethany finally just gave in and took a nap with
her in our bed. Oh, in case you're wondering, naptime on Sunday morning was
more of the same, only with two escapes instead of one.
Finally, Bethany and I came to the realization that we
couldn't have Ellie dropping three to four feet to the floor below every time
she wanted out of her crib. Therefore, we made the difficult decision to
transition Ellie's crib into a toddler bed much, much earlier than we had
wanted.
 | ||
| This is not a picture of our crib but is a stock photo of our crib from the internet. Follow? |
In case you're wondering, the actual process of converting
our crib to a toddler bed isn't a long process. Four screws and done. The
difficult decision lied with the fact that Ellie, like most toddlers, doesn't
really do well with change. Now, Ellie was initially overjoyed at her
"new" bed and her ability to get in and out of it at will. That would
change though once bedtime rolled around.
Following Ellie's bath, it came time to get her dressed in
her nice, fuzzy polar bear pajamas, brush her hair, turn on her sleepy time CD,
hug and kiss her good night, and lastly, deposit her into her "new"
bed before closing the door. Now, something you should know about Ellie is that
she's never been a huge fan of bedtime. Before now though, she was unable to do
anything about. That is no longer the case.
Ellie promptly dropped out of her bed and began beating on
the door with all of her might. Bethany and I knew this would be the scenario
ahead of time so we had planned on ten minutes before soothing our child.
Unfortunately, the intensity and violence with which Ellie pounded on the door
drew us to her much earlier.
In fact, Bethany and I ended up having to split time over
the course of an hour laying on the floor next to Ellie's bed just to keep her
in there. Unfortunately, when I left for the final time, Ellie bumbled out of
bed once again to beat on the door until she finally passed out about fifteen
minutes later. It's ok, don't be too worried about her as I had to make a
couple of visitations over the course of the night before finally moving Ellie
to our bed during the 4:00 hour.
Now, with one night in the books, I find myself totally
wondering what this process is going to bring in the long run. The one thing
I'm hoping is that it won't take another 365 days (with me as primary
caregiver) to achieve some resolution. By that I mean, Mom and Dad winning and
the baby losing. #DaddyWrite
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