Daylight Savings Weekend was quite eventful at our household.

Sam finally mastered the pincer grasp and can pick up and eat Cheerios on his own:

And Jane helped build - and actually slept in! - a toddler bed for the first time:

I wasn’t quite sure how the whole transition from crib to toddler bed would go, but believe it or not, we survived with no major meltdowns on her part or ours!

Here’s our crib-to-bed transition story:

We started out about 3 months ago with the book, “Big Enough For a Bed,” starring our favorite furry friend, Elmo. (We bought it along with “Too Big for Diapers,” in anticipation of potty training, which we haven’t really started in earnest yet).

After about six weeks of reading the book almost every day and telling Jane she’s a big girl who needs a “big girl bed,” we started visiting Ikea (one of her favorite playgrounds), to let her try out the toddler beds. I know, eww, germs - but it worked. Two visits to the toddler bed section got her enthusiasm cranked up and she started thinking the whole thing was her own idea instead of ours. Reverse psychology parenting at its finest.

Last week, when we finally had enough of the nightly mid-night rescues for Sam, who was constantly getting stuck in the corners of the mini crib he grew out of four months ago, we took the plunge and bought the DaVinci Sleigh Toddler Bed in Honey Oak at Diapers.com, where I spend 90% of our disposable income. (We considered the KidKraft Modern Todder Cot because of the shelf feature, but ended up opting for real wood instead of particle board). Jane’s bed, for $99, no shipping, no tax and a thirty minute set up, turned out to be perfect!

When the bed was built, Jane clambered up to bounce her heart out on the mattress. Catching her on video squealing, “What a wonderful day!” and “I’m a big girl!” was priceless.

But then the panic set in: how were we going to get her to actually sleep in the bed? Instead of being able to contain her in her cage crib from which there was no escape, now she would be free to roam about as she pleased. What if we could never get her to stay in the bed?!

“Luckily,” I was at work when the first naptime came around. (Yes, another working weekend). Incredibly, Hubby officially earned the title, “King of Naptime,” for somehow - I’m still not sure how - getting her down for a 1.5 hour nap.

Despite his success, I knew that come bedtime it would be my turn for the real reckoning. What I didn’t know was that I was in for a very pleasant surprise.

For some reason, even though bedtime has been a bit of a struggle these days, being in the open bed instead of the walled in crib didn’t make a difference. We went through the normal “I don’t want to go to bed” routine a few times, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. And finally, she just gave in and stayed put until the next morning. A Daylight Savings Miracle!

I have my own thoughts about why this is so, which I’ll post about soon, but I do think that allowing Jane to choose to go to bed on her own while still setting firm bedtime limits got us to this point today. For now, I’m just glad that Sam is finally getting a good night’s rest in Jane’s old full-size crib and that we’ve conquered the toddler bed hurdle. One down, two (saying bye-bye to the bottle and potty-training) to go.

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Chrissy – who has written 422 posts on The Outlaw Mom® Blog - Creative Living in a Conventional World.

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