Toddler Bed Transition
Executive summary: Our toddler abruptly decided one day that she’s done with her crib, and thankfully it’s been a smooth (if sudden) transition both routine-wise and furniture-wise.
It’s happened. Our family is out of the crib phase. (Now if only I could say that about the giant pile of other kids gear and accessories, like strollers, car seats, step stools, high chairs, sippy cups, and everything else that makes it hard to be minimalist with mini humans.) My newly minted 2yo has decided that cribs are for babies, and soon after her birthday, she started to climb out every morning. Contrast this with my 5yo, who would probably still be sleeping in a crib (likely wedged into a corner, his favorite spot) if we hadn’t evicted him when he was 3.5. This seems to be the general pattern between our kids: the older one acts like a baby while the younger one tries to act like a big kid. So little sis has made the jail break a bit sooner than expected (I was thinking it might happen around 2.5-3yo), and the entire internet says it’s not safe to keep kids in cribs once that happens, so we promptly turned her crib into a toddler bed. It is a convertible crib, so we had everything we needed already on hand. It cost a pretty penny (~$750) for a pretty piece of furniture, but it’s been very useful to be able to have her in a mini crib the first few months while tucked into our tiny hallway closet (I talk about that here), then in a regular-sized crib for the next 1.5 years while sharing a room with big bro, and now in a toddler bed in the same room. As an added bonus, it’s made the naptime and bedtime routines easier on me, as I can now easily reach her instead of having to stick my arms through the crib bars to soothe her.
No more cribs in this family! Everyone has a (kind of) grown up bed now.
The first night after we removed the side rails, I was worried that she’d either roll out overnight or get out and cause havoc in the morning once she woke up. The bed does have a little lip that protrudes over the top of the mattress by ~2”, but to mitigate the chances of her falling out or bonking her head on the hard lip, I lined up a row of stuffed animals on either side of the bed as a barrier. Put those stuffies to work! My worries ended up being for naught — she’s had no issues with the bed, and she shockingly stays in it when she wakes up in the morning instead of getting out and running around. That last part I attribute to my 5yo, who we hear whispering variations of “no, don’t do that” in the mornings after they’re both awake, and (also shockingly) little sis seems to heed her brother for those few moments a day. For context, my son is the reigning champ of staying in bed — he literally will not leave it for anything, until we come into the bedroom in the morning to get him. It’s led to potty incidents and other adverse outcomes, but 99.9% of the time, it’s great for us as parents to never hear him get up!
Little sis is guarded by a lineup of stuffed animals.
I have no idea how long my toddler will stay in her newly converted bed. The general theme seems to be that she does everything sooner than we think she will (especially given that the yardstick is her brother, who has never shown much interest in growing up). I think size-wise, she should be able to fit on a crib-sized mattress until she’s 5. But I also thought she’d stay in her mini crib for at least a year, but she came out at 5 months because she wanted more space to squirm (unlike her brother, she does not like being jammed into a corner). So maybe this bed will only last till she’s 3, and then she’ll be clamoring for a twin bed. In which case, it probably wasn’t “worth it” to spend $250/year on that pretty convertible crib, but I swear, it’s the only kid thing we’ve ever splurged on, and it’s been very convenient being able adapt it to our needs in a 1-bedroom apartment. That’s one of the perks of being minimalist: we can opt for quality over quantity when the occasion calls for it (and in this case, the size of our closet called for it, as this was the only mini crib on the market that we could squeeze into that tiny nook). We say the same thing about offspring these days, don’t we? Instead of having six kids and letting them run amok, we invest a lot more energy and resources into raising just two. Is the total amount of work greater in the former scenario or the latter? I’ll never know, because that’s an experiment I’m not going to undertake, noooo thaaaank youuuuu.