Big Boy Room - Staying in Bed

You may remember that over the past two months we slowly been transforming our guest room into Sam's Big Boy Room in preparation for TK to arrive and move into the nursery in June. When we first moved Sam into the room and onto the Big Boy Bed, he enjoyed his freedom - a bit much you might say. (In fact, the comic Stone Soup had an entire run of comics devoted to the toddler in that strip moving into his Big Boy Bed at the same time we were moving Sam. The best comics that speak so directly to our situation it isn't funny are these two.) Every night he would get off the bed, grab some toys, and have a good time in the dark.

We began to help Sam stay in bed first with the Big Boy Tent. The method that we used with the tent was working wonderfully, but was taking at least 30 minutes between all our staged appearances and snuggling. We had talked abstractly about what to do next, but hadn't made a firm decision.

Last night forced that decision. For my birthday last year, Joy gave me tickets to the local Repertory Theatre. Last night we were scheduled to go see To Kill a Mockingbird, one of our favorite stories. (the play itself was wonderful and the acting convincing but for those pesky accents. Most around us didn't notice, but we know the sound of South Alabama too well to be taken in by faux hick) That meant that we had to have a babysitter put Sam to bed. Jennifer does a wonderful job with Sam and followed our instructions perfectly except that she left the books they read in bed with Sam. She heard him over the monitor talking about what he was reading and she went in, told him a short story, covered him back up, and came back downstairs.

That's right, she left the books in the bed.

But even with the temptation of the books and Jennifer only coming in once and not snuggling, Sam was completely asleep when we got home. We'll probably still want to snuggle (and no telling if he'll do the same for us tonight), but progress is progress.